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Last week, as I was getting my head around our schedule, I realized that I had committed to going to a cookie exchange party but had no time to actually make the cookies. And this is a yearly tradition that I look forward to, with a group of people I look forward to seeing. As I thought through my options, I immediately hit a wall of guilt for even considering the option of buying cookies to bring. I’m a food blogger! Surely if anyone can make a few batches of cookies it’s me!
I’ve been noticing how quickly I judge my own motherhood when I hit the walls of my bandwidth during the holidays. But somehow, this year also feels different—because I am, for the first time ever, not ignoring myself and simply pushing through it.
Last year, my family was on the cusp of dividing our schedule in half with shared custody and it felt crucial to me to make the entire length of the holiday season feel like The Most. Part of that was to help ensure to the kids that our traditions were staying the same, even if some logistics about our lives were about to change. And part was to simply convince myself that I could actually do it on my own. So I pushed through and did it all—ignoring how exhausted and grumpy a lot of it made me because I felt that the kids deserved it.
We made batches of Christmas Cookies to decorate together. We did Salt Dough Ornaments. There was a holiday ice show, rides on a trolley downtown, ornament making, wreath making, homemade food gifts, and more. I got decorations for our mantle and figured out how to put up a tree on my own.
We went, as I told my kids, “overboard”. Though in doing so, I lost myself a little. I remember basically reading in bed for the week after the holiday because that’s what I had the energy for.
And so this month, after a full year of being able to more easily trust myself and having a lot of evidence that our two family household is running smoothly, I’m listening to myself.
Which means I am saying no to things, am fully ignoring others, and am trying to actually enjoy the things we decide to do. With less resentment! It’s a little shocking to realize we have the option to choose this route—without feeling like we’re failing as moms. And that the kids haven’t even noticed.
This is what my plan looks like now.
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