Brian and I have slowly been building on Christmas traditions for our little family. So far our traditions have included Advent activities every year (although this year I'm way behind), a birthday celebration for Jesus on Christmas morning (complete with cinnamon rolls and candles), the same Eggs Benedict and mimosa breakfast, stockings stuffed with individually wrapped gifts, and new Christmas jammies.
We've chosen to follow the "want, need, wear, read" pattern to gifts and then choose one more traditional, "old-school" gift to be left out and unwrapped under the tree. This is our gift from Santa, even though we have yet to actually ever reference him in our home! (Biding our time on that one).
This year, at the recommendation of Brian we decided to add in a new tradition! Yesterday, we loaded up on the ingredients for brownies and four types of cookies (confession: the pile included boxed brownies and two types of break and bake cookies) and we spent the entire afternoon baking! There were messes and Christmas music and kids licking (and then washing) their hands 1 billion times, and all of the chaos and goodness you would expect of a Christmas Baking Day with two preschoolers.
This was also a really excellent opportunity to talk about giving. It's a hard, hard lesson for a three and five year old to comprehend when we intend to give the cookies we're baking away to someone else. Yes, there were tears - but I think it ended up well!
Today, we loaded up the kids' gator (which worked out super well) and knocked on the doors to seven surrounding houses! Three of the four neighbors we talked to we were meeting for the VERY FIRST TIME. These are people who live 35 yards from us!
Brian had coached Beckett on how to introduce himself with a handshake, ask questions, and wish the neighbors a Merry Christmas. He did a FANTASTIC job. Brian and I both thoroughly enjoyed watching him work (he's definitely his father's child).
For those who know me, you know that neither baking or knocking on people's doors and making small talk are in my wheelhouse of talents. Both give me anxiety (and spoiler alert: Charlie is a chip off the ole block). However, I was pleasantly surprised at how much Charlie and both I enjoyed this project and I'm sincerely looking forward to getting to know our neighbors better! This is definitely a tradition we'll aim to keep for many years to come!
No comments :
Post a Comment