Simple Saturday - The Holiday Edition: Adjustments

Over the next month or so I want to share Holiday plans and preparations with you. Of all the things I do as a parent, the hardest to simplify is the Holiday season. There's Christmas, which is a simplicity nightmare in itself. But there is also both mine and Papas birthdays. And my side of the family does a four day beach trip for Winter Solstice. Starting with Thanksgiving, it feels like a tinsel-festooned roller coaster that I cant stop.

I'll claim responsibility for a fair part of the chaos. I love decorating and baking cookies. I love making thoughtful gifts. I want to have traditions sprinkled throughout the month and those traditions take time and thought and energy. But I love it.

What we are slowly learning to do as a family is adjust our expectations - and to help those around us adjust theirs.

After the first Christmas with Brother, Papa-Bug and I realized we wanted some holiday time quiet at home. We stopped going to his parents house for the whole day of presents and movies and dinner and what not. It was always kind of exhausting and meant a day out and social. We want the Little-Bugs to enjoy the mellow pace of the holidays, as well as the familial gaiety. Now we have Christmas morning at home - slow, unscheduled, mellow, and growing our own traditions. We go to Grandma and Grandpa's for a dinner and presents.

This was disappointing for the grandparents, and for that I feel bad. But... These are the holidays and I don't want us to go through them feeling like I have to meet others holiday standards and expectations. It's important that we all feel comfortable and festive. It's important to me that my kids have traditions linked to home.

This year, just this past week, we broke with tradition and spent Thanksgiving with Brother-Bug's God Patents instead of at a grandparent house. It was so relaxing. It was the Thanksgiving I have been wishing for. Close, quiet, no expectations, no historical familial drama... Good food and lots to be thankful for. Added benefit was watching Brother-Bug ground and center the way he does only with those beloved God Parents.

Again, grandparents were sorry not to have our presence and for that I am sorry.

I'm not sorry for taking my family's traditions into my mind and hands, making them into holidays that meet the needs and dreams of me, Papa-Bug, and the Little-Bugs. Those dreams will certainly involve biological and extended family. We are truly blessed that we have so many loving people who want to celebrate with us. I keep in mind that I am responsible for the Little-Bugs in this house having a fabulous time, and for building traditions that are comfortable and sustainable for many years. I am not responsible for how other people feel when I adjust our family's traditions and Holiday commitments. We will continue to search for balance between obligation, expectation, dreams, desires, and realities. My focus is on having fun, all of us looking forward to each new holiday delight, sharing with family sometimes, with friends sometimes, and staying quietly at home reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales" sometimes.

Every year I find a place or two that I can make a change and adjust my expectations. When I am looking forward to the holidays and looking for ways to simplify those holidays, a good place to start, in my experience, is with how much we do and with whom we do it.

When To Push

Brother-Bug is a cautious and fairly quiet guy. He would sit on the couch, reading to himself all day if he could. He is intensely uncomfortable in group activities and class situations. He also needs lots of encouragement do do things with his body. He is so very much in his head that active play is a huge leap for him - from thinking to moving.

I'm glad we Homeschool him so that he can do and learn within these challenges, becoming comfortable and competent at his own speed. Contradicting that is my feeling that I need to help him push his boundaries a little, help him to thrive outside his comfortable, book-lined groove.

We've tried art classes (a success for listening and following instructions) and ballet (it went okay, but it was really hard for both of us and he didn't get comfortable until his last class).

Enter swim lessons.

Brother-Bug is the shivering body on the left. He's heatedly debating with his teacher about jumping in...

I feel pretty strongly about learning to swim. Of all the activities we might choose to enroll our children in, swimming is the only one I can think of that very well might save their lives one day. Sister-Bug is also in swim lessons (of the baby, singing and splashing variety) and she loves them. The issue with her is the opposite of Brother-Bug - she won't wait to jump in. She just leaps.

But back to the reluctant child.

Know that swimming is a valuable life skill, I chose to push it. It meets the two other places I want to push a little also - group/class participation and physical activity - so it's a good deal all around.

But it's really hard to watch him. He wept through the better part of the first lesson. Papa-Bug and I watched with breaking hearts as he struggled through fear and resistance, trusting that the (vastly underpaid) young swim instructor would be gentle with our little boy's worries. We wondered if we were pushing too much. We gave him a sweet granola bar when he was done.

The second week of lessons he didn't want to go. We went anyway and he wasn't as resistant as the week before. And, wonder of wonders he did great! He even managed to blow some bubbles, which is a major accomplishment for him.

The (someday going to be) courageous swimmer...and his excellently patient teacher.

He did everything his instructors asked of him, except jumping in to the instructor's waiting hands. He didn't believe her when she promised to catch him. He jumped in holding her hands. He almost did his back floats all by himself. And we took him out for a donut afterward.

I hope he continues to flourish in these lessons, and that I continue to let him struggle just a little bit. I don't need him to be a joiner, and I don't need him to be a professional swimmer. I want him to know that he can push those boundaries - that it can be safe and even fun sometimes. And that there are occasionally donuts afterward.