The Dreaded “Homemade Christmas” Cycle

Since I’m not a fan of meaningless “stuff” nor do I like to spend a lot of money, this year I decided to make all of the Christmas presents for my children.

What was I thinking?

Is anyone else as crazy as I am?

These “newborn” days I tend to roll out of bed only after the rest of the kids insist on being fed, bathed, clothed or some other such nonsense.  It’s about then that I realize how HUNGRY I am.  After scarfing down an egg sandwich and check my email I look around to see the mess that has appeared in between when I went to bed and when I woke up and think “AGH!  Only X days until Christmas! I’m never going to finish in time!”

I then spend the next few hours trying to convince the kids that cleaning the house is WAY more fun than messing it up.  By about the time the house starts to look decent I think “I can TOTALLY do this!  I have X days left!”  By then it’s about lunch time.  I eat a sandwich, set the kids up with a movie and a feeding trough and head upstairs to the sewing room.

After several hours of running up and down the stairs to rescue whichever kid from Jack or seeing what caused the latest deafening crash.  After that, I spend a while trying to keep Jack out of the sewing room and when that fails I try and keep him from unthreading either sewing machine or (heaven forbid) the serger.  About this time I have to play mediator between children who want to watch Tinkerbell and children who want to watch Spiderman.  It takes all of my strength not to open our traditional Christmas Eve Movie present because I know that will keep them occupied for as long as it takes for them to watch it at least three times.  This is usually when Henry, who has been sleeping peacefully all day and realizes that he is UBER hungry.  It’s about now that I think “AGH!  Only X days until Christmas! I’m never going to finish in time!”

After Matt gets home I throw more food at the kids, hurry them off to bed soon as I can justify it and then barricade myself in the sewing room again where I spend a few uninterrupted hours.  Right before I turn in I think ”I can TOTALLY do this!  I have X days left!”

Next year remind me to start on my Christmas projects in July.