A three year old’s mind does not follow a calendar. Just because Christmas ends in December (or technically on January 6th) doesn’t mean Little Miss is ready to give it up.
Since we are busy next weekend, we took down all of our Christmas decorations today. We told Little Miss that this was the plan for our day, but still answered the question, “Why are we taking down the tree?” and its follow up, “Why is Christmas over?” about a million times. I guess it just doesn’t make sense to her. Christmas is so much fun, why would you end it?
And while we’re at it, why end Halloween for that matter. Little Miss was very invested in Trick-or-Treating this year. The kids managed to gather two overfull pumpkin buckets of candy from just a few streets in our neighborhood. I’d like to say that Little Miss doesn’t eat candy, but she is three now, and lets face it, it just happens. But while she loves M&Ms, lollipops and Twizzlers, that is nearly the depth of her candy knowledge, and it isn’t something we eat regularly in the house. Because of this, the buckets of candy ended up making much better toys than snacks.
Every day, often multiple times a day, for months, Little Miss and I would play Trick-or-Treat, better known as the most boring game ever. Here’s how it works: One of us is the Trick-or-Treater, the other is the candy-giver-outer. The Trick-or-Treater knocks, and says trick or treat, the candy person puts a piece of candy in the bucket. Sometimes there are Little People princesses and the toy castle involved, but more often than not, we would just be sitting within inches of each other passing candy back and forth while Mr. Man pulverized Doritos still in the bags we received from a near by house.
The Trick-or-Treat game even continued after my husband started eating the mangled candy and I started throwing away the chewed packages. The only reason we aren’t still playing it is because I threw all the rest away on Christmas Eve and hid the pumpkins.
Now that Christmas is over, we are very big into giving presents. Little Miss puts random things in random boxes or bags and tells me they are my present and I have to open them. Sometimes she just hands me a pile of stuff and tells me I need to open it, which is confusing to me since I have no idea what to do. Lately, she also wants to tape wrapping paper on the walls.
But the weird thing is this time, the holidays seem to be getting mashed together. While we are passing “gifts” back and forth, Little Miss also keeps asking us to “paint eggs and cover them with glitter.” And it’s also everyone’s birthday, all the time, so sometimes I get birthday presents rather than Christmas ones. It’s just holiday central in our house!
As I sit here now, with the kids in bed and the toys mostly cleaned up, I realize that it’s just the magic of these holidays that get kids so caught up, and I feel guilty that I am not as excited by her games as she is. Today I was just going through the motions, “Oh you got me a gift? Wow. Thanks!” but tomorrow I am going to try harder. I am going to throw Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas on Netflix and “exchange presents” for as long as Little Miss would like. Because she is my magic, and I am going to help her enjoy hers.
Since we are busy next weekend, we took down all of our Christmas decorations today. We told Little Miss that this was the plan for our day, but still answered the question, “Why are we taking down the tree?” and its follow up, “Why is Christmas over?” about a million times. I guess it just doesn’t make sense to her. Christmas is so much fun, why would you end it?
And while we’re at it, why end Halloween for that matter. Little Miss was very invested in Trick-or-Treating this year. The kids managed to gather two overfull pumpkin buckets of candy from just a few streets in our neighborhood. I’d like to say that Little Miss doesn’t eat candy, but she is three now, and lets face it, it just happens. But while she loves M&Ms, lollipops and Twizzlers, that is nearly the depth of her candy knowledge, and it isn’t something we eat regularly in the house. Because of this, the buckets of candy ended up making much better toys than snacks.
Every day, often multiple times a day, for months, Little Miss and I would play Trick-or-Treat, better known as the most boring game ever. Here’s how it works: One of us is the Trick-or-Treater, the other is the candy-giver-outer. The Trick-or-Treater knocks, and says trick or treat, the candy person puts a piece of candy in the bucket. Sometimes there are Little People princesses and the toy castle involved, but more often than not, we would just be sitting within inches of each other passing candy back and forth while Mr. Man pulverized Doritos still in the bags we received from a near by house.
The Trick-or-Treat game even continued after my husband started eating the mangled candy and I started throwing away the chewed packages. The only reason we aren’t still playing it is because I threw all the rest away on Christmas Eve and hid the pumpkins.
Now that Christmas is over, we are very big into giving presents. Little Miss puts random things in random boxes or bags and tells me they are my present and I have to open them. Sometimes she just hands me a pile of stuff and tells me I need to open it, which is confusing to me since I have no idea what to do. Lately, she also wants to tape wrapping paper on the walls.
But the weird thing is this time, the holidays seem to be getting mashed together. While we are passing “gifts” back and forth, Little Miss also keeps asking us to “paint eggs and cover them with glitter.” And it’s also everyone’s birthday, all the time, so sometimes I get birthday presents rather than Christmas ones. It’s just holiday central in our house!
As I sit here now, with the kids in bed and the toys mostly cleaned up, I realize that it’s just the magic of these holidays that get kids so caught up, and I feel guilty that I am not as excited by her games as she is. Today I was just going through the motions, “Oh you got me a gift? Wow. Thanks!” but tomorrow I am going to try harder. I am going to throw Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas on Netflix and “exchange presents” for as long as Little Miss would like. Because she is my magic, and I am going to help her enjoy hers.