Oh, honestly…

Today is my last day of work until the New Year!! (Can you hear the whoops of celebration from there?)

Today is my last day of work, and two of my three families are already gone on holiday!!
(More cheers!!!)

Today is my last day of work … and on Friday, when Daniel’s dad found out his were the only kids coming, he apologized. With energy and remorse. Of course, I was all professional and “No, no! I’m open for business, and you have to work! Don’t worry about it.” And then he was all, “Oh, but no, you almost have a day off! I feel bad!” We chatted a bit more about the kids’ day, and then he was off. “We’ll have to see what we can do about Monday!” were his parting words.

Because most families wouldn’t be back on Monday, I give the parents their children’s gifts from me at home time. I send them home so the parents get the pleasure of seeing their children open the gifts Christmas morning. In so doing, I am depriving myself of seeing them open my gifts, true, but I’m being considerate here. The family Christmas is the most important thing.

Friday after work, 15 minutes after Rosie’s departure, Wonderful Husband and I walk to the pharmacy on the corner, passing Rosie’s dad, out playing in his drive with Rosie and Rory. (I’d sent a gift home for Rory, too, even though he’s no longer in my care. Rory comes bombing over to see me.)

“Thanks for the flashlight!!” he says. “I can make it go really bright!”

He’d opened it already? “Oh, yes,” says dad. “We like to spread the gifts out a bit. They can get overwhelmed on Christmas morning.”

Blink, blink. Fifteen minutes? They’d opened their gifts within 15 minutes of leaving my house.

You know, he’s quite right. Little kids can be overwhelmed by the enormity of Christmas. Opening the odds-and-ends gifts from neighbours and friends — and caregivers! — when they arrive makes good sense.

If that’s the case, don’t you think it would have made even more good sense to let her open it RIGHT THERE IN MY HOME so I could see her???

Oh, honestly.

The weekend proceeds. I do some last-minute dashing about, go to a Christmas party, decorate our tree. (Very late for us.) The weekend proceeds … without a phone call from Daniel’s parents about Monday morning. So I assume I’m working today.

Opening time… no Daniel.
8:00… no Daniel.
8:30… no Daniel.
No phone call, either.
9:00… I check my answering machine. Did I miss a message? No.
9:15… Okay, they’re toying with me. This is just cruel. (My rule is, if you’re going to arrive after 9, give me a call so I can accommodate it, since we generally head out at nine for our outing.)
9:27… Can it be true? Am I getting a freebie, unexpected, extra Christmas gift of a day off? I won’t believe it, I tell myself, beating down the hope, until after 9:30.
9:30… no Daniel… I’m still hesitant to believe it, but hope is rising!

9:32
They arrive.

Oh, honestly…

Santa Claus is *hic* coming to town

“Daddy says Santa likes beer.” Poppy has been discussing Santa — again — this time with an eye to the treats they’ll be putting out for the merry old glutton on Christmas Eve.

“I’d say Daddy’s right. Every Santa I’ve ever known has liked beer.” Oops. I just said ‘Santa’ in the plural. Happily, she’s on to her next thought and doesn’t notice.

“But the Santa at the mall said Santa likes chocolate milk.”

“Hm. I think he wasn’t the real Santa, then.”

“No! He was the real Santa.”

“Maybe not, you know. There’s only one Santa, and there are lots and lots of malls. Besides, he’s busy at the North Pole making presents. Most of the Santas you see at the malls are helpers. So I think this was a helper, and he made a mistake.”

“Noooo. He was the real Santa!”

“Well, I know how you can find out for sure if he was real.”

“Oh! How?!”

“You can leave Santa chocolate milk AND a beer, and see which one he drinks.”

Poppy’s mother enters at exactly this juncture in the proceedings. I get a quizzical look. I give her the backstory. Mom is all over that. Because, it seems, Mom also has a backstory.

“That’s an excellent idea, Poppy! Because you know what? I really don’t think that was the real Santa at the mall. You know how, when you told him you wanted a scooter for Christmas, he told you that was no good, because you can’t go outside with a scooter in the winter? And then he told you maybe you really wanted a Disney Princess doll?”

My jaw drops. I make wide-eyed contact with mom. Seriously?? He said that?? Mom nods, her lip curled. What an ass, huh? The conversations you learn to have without a single word spoken.

And what? Is this Santa on commission from Disney?

“Oh my goodness, Poppy!” I am the very picture of puzzled astonishment. “That couldn’t be the real Santa. The real Santa would know that you love scooters, and you don’t care about Disney princesses. What a silly Santa he was!”

Mom and I laugh in what is probably a disgustingly smug and patronizing way as we work in tandem to deprogram the sweet tot. Rotten, commercially depraved, corporate minion sexist silly fake-Santa, pushing Disney princess on an innocent tot!!

Poppy, however, remains unconvinced. “Yes, it was the real Santa!”

Mom grabs the lifeline I’ve unwittingly tossed her.

“Well, I know how to find out. We’ll do what Mary said: We’ll put out some beer, and some chocolate milk, and we’ll see what Santa drinks. If he drinks the beer, that Santa at the mall was not the real Santa.”

Poppy nods. “It’s a ‘speriment!”

Mom and I glow in the brilliance of this genius child.

“Yes, it’s an experiment,” I agree.

As mom shepherds Poppy out the door, she whispers over her shoulder. “Tells my kid she doesn’t want a scooter. Where does he get off?” She snorts. “Santa’s going to drink an entire damned six-pack. Just to prove the point.”

Sticky Tree

Another fine idea from Pinterest! I saw a few variations. This is mine:
A large triangle of clear Con-tact paper, sticky side out, taped to the wall with green painter’s tape. (To get the width I wanted, I overlapped three panels of the plastic. Easy to do. If you only have one child, a tree cut from a single panel may well be enough.)

A container of likely ornaments to stick on the tree:

Daniel found some plastic candy canes to stick onto the tree. I thought they’d be too heavy, but let him try. It’s all in the interest of education, right? Turns out they did stick to the tree. For a while…
At the end of the first day, our tree looked like this:

Modest, tasteful, a bit random, but the best Christmas trees are never too orderly and picture-perfect!

We had several days of play with it. Foamy shapes — stockings, ornaments, elves, and snowflakes — went on an off. Ribbons. Sequins.

And then, one glorious day, after a trip to the dollar store, tinsel! Green tinsel. Lots and lots of green tinsel!

It may not be tasteful. It’s certainly not tidy. But, oh, we had fun!!

The tree lasted about a week before all the sticky had been worn off by constant rearranging of ornaments by four pairs of sticky hands. It was a great week! We have a different tree planned for next week, but this one’s a quick and easy set-up, if you want to try.

I confess: I am a toilet-roll hoarder

Because it pays off! Just watch:

Busy, busy hands.

Lots and lots and lots of toilet rolls. 72, to be exact. Which I just happened to have in a giant bag in the back porch.

Lots of paint.

Add a judicious amount of clear packing tape, spatter-painted paper, card stock, and ribbon…

and you get advent calendars!!

Ta-dah!

Simple. Assembling them, which I did after hours, was a little time-consuming, but was done while I visited with my children — specifically, my eldest, visiting from Missouri with her lovely boyfriend — so that was fun. Each tube is stuffed with a chocolate or two scrunched up in a poof of tissue (just to keep it in the tube).

Pretty, effective, simple — and cheap! My kind of craft.

This used perhaps half my stash. Perhaps. Whatever shall we do next?

Santa Claus, Enforcer

“And if you’re not good, you won’t get any presents at Christmas.”

Poppy is explaining the mysteries of Christmas, and Santa Claus in particular, to a very interested Rosie and Daniel.

“No presents? If you’re bad, you doesn’t get any presents?” Daniel digs a bit deeper. I think the boy realizes he has some cause for concern here.

Poppy is firm. “No. No presents for bad children.” She lifts her shoulder and crouches a bit, places her hands beside her cheeks, spreads the fingers, her eyes wide and shifting from side to side, the very posture of sneaky watchfulness. As imagined by a three-year-old, at any rate. Poppy tells her stories as much with her body as with her words. It’s a treat to watch her in action. “Santa Claus watches you aaaaaalllll the time, and you got to be good, and if you’re not?” She stands up suddenly, straight and tall, and slaps her hands together, cleaning imaginary sins and misdemeanors off her palms.

“You don’t get ANYTHING AT ALL!”

I work in a daycare. I have worked in a daycare for closing in on two decades now. I have heard about Santa each and every year. Now, when I was growing up, Santa brought one present. One modest present, at that. The rest were from identifiable people in my life. The big present? The one I’d been waiting for with bated breath for ever and ever? THAT one came from my mother, thank you so very much. I’m thinking she wanted the credit for her efforts. And whyever not?! Let some imaginary dude steal your thunder? Pfft.

So, Santa was part of my childhood Christmases, but not a big one. Lots of other things stood out more.

Thus, I didn’t ‘do’ Santa much with my own children. It didn’t rob us of the joy of the season. At all. In fact, I’ve argued before that shifting the emphasis may even have improved it. (Not, of course, that you can’t shift the emphasis and still have Santa.)

Not that I’ve ever once even considered disabusing a daycare tot of their belief in Santa. That’s totally their parents’ call, and I support whatever decisions they’ve made.

But…

This year? It’s because of Poppy, I know. That “nothing if you’re bad” conversation has happened routinely over the past couple of weeks. The message is obviously being hammered home hard from someone in her life, and there is no doubt it is being absorbed. And the more I hear it, the more it rings in my ears like a really obvious — and not very kind or loving — form of manipulation.

“Be good or else!”

Behavioural blackmail, emotional blackmail. A threat.

Not, I confess, that Poppy seems traumatized by it. She’s more excited, far as I can make out. Excited and intrigued. And, of course, there is no worry at all that her tree will be barren of gifts come Christmas morning.

(Which makes it a completely empty threat, doesn’t it? This is a good thing for her tender little psyche, but, as we all know, bad parenting strategy. Technically, anyway. I give this one a Bad Parenting pass, because it’s more a game than anything, and most kids figure that out soon enough. Has Poppy figured it out, or does she just not see how awful the reality would be, were the threat to actually happen? The latter, I’m quite sure. She doesn’t really get it, for all it intrigues her.)

There’s no worry at all, even if it were a real threat. She’s three, of course, but she’s cheerful, cooperative, friendly. She is in no way a ‘handful’. (*cough*unlike Daniel*cough, cough*)

Down through my daycare years, pretty nearly all the kids have heard about Santa. And let me underline, that though I’m not a huge propagator of the Santa myth, I’m not opposed to it. I’m neutral, I guess. I’m sure most children get the “better be good!” warnings, too, but no one has made as much of them as Poppy. No child, ever. In close to twenty years. Is this a function of her character — does she like the mystery, does it tweak her (greatly reduced) tendency to anxiety, is she duly impressed by the need to behave? Has she taken a mild suggestion and just run with it in a big way? Or is someone in her life really, really working this idea?

I think it’s the latter.

And, for the first time in my daycare career, Santa Claus is making me uncomfortable.

This week, I let a little wry humour peek out as I stepped into that conversation.

Daniel was looking a bit worried. “Santa won’t give you anything?”

I ruffled his hair. “Well, you don’t get anything from Santa, no. He’s sort of fickle that way. But the people who know you and really love you? They love you even when you do bad stuff. You will get presents from them.”

I tap Poppy on her nose. “And you, missy? You are not a bad girl. Of course there will be presents for you!!”

And if I’ve thereby completely undermined the Family Child Control Strategy for December?

I. Don’t. Care.

Merry, Merry

Pretty, pretty

From Llevo el Invierno via Prudent Baby via One Pretty Thing, we have…

a whole heap of…

very, very pretty…

wings!

Most of these were made with scrap material I had already, though I did need to purchase some. Aren’t they lovely???

I cut the feathers using pinking shears to reduce fraying, since there was NO WAY I was going to hem each scallop of each row of each wing. No way at all.

Since there’s such a mix of fabrics of indeterminate provenance, they will have to be machine washed in cold water on the delicate cycle, and must NOT be put in the dryer!! But costumes don’t get laundered so much as spot-cleaned generally, anyway, right? And what’s a little hang-drying in the face of such utter cuteness?

I’ve made five sets this month. Though the original blogger glued hers, I sewed mine. I think they’ll be more durable that way. What with cutting the scalloped strips for feathers, piecing, sewing, and finishing (a bit; they could be much more finely finished, but I was DONE), I’d say each pair of wings took three hours.

A labour of love, for sure, but SO CUTE. And really? So FUN to do. I enjoyed every minute.

Damn! And a pop quiz

I have a post in the works, with lots of pretty pictures of the DARLING Christmas gifts I have made for the children… when the batteries in my camera died.

I am a failed blogger this month, people, I freely admit it.

It should be a simple matter of replacing the batteries, but we’re down to our last set of batteries, so they’ll need to be recharged before I can finish the task.

I am also a failed photographer. Yeesh.

Here’s a peek at the ONE picture I did get uploaded before my technical difficulties.

Pretty, huh? Any guesses what you’re looking at??

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is coming…

…And I have dishpan hands…

So far this morning, we have:
-baked banana bread
-cleaned up after baking
-decorated the cookies we made yesterday
-cleaned up after decorating
-finished the gifts for the parents
-cleaned up after the gift-making
-made wrapping paper for the gifts for the parents
-cleaned up after the wrapping paper making

It’s only 10:15.

One of us needs a nap.