Stolen Moments: Take a Deep Breath . . .

Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

No, I'm not doing yoga. That brief spurt of regular exercise from my last post has fallen by the wayside. Although, writing those words down is guilting me into a workout. Maybe later.

It's Christmas time. And I'm barely holding on. I'm trying to remember to enjoy the season, to not stress out about chores, cleaning, shopping, baking, meal planning, laundry. DEEP BREATHS. DEEP BREATHS.

Right. Working fulltime nights with two kids and one on the way is so much harder than I expected or anticipated. Not only am I unable to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time, my brain is going a mile a minute from the time I wake up, and even when I sleep, trying to remember all the things I "need" to do. I have spreadsheets of chores, lists of menus, shopping lists, lists of lists. And I don't know if it's adding to the stress or not. All I know, both of us are looking forward to May. Or the end of April, if I get enough hours in.

I know I need to let some things go. But what? Laundry still needs to be done. Meals need to be made. The house needs to be a little bit tidied, for all our sanity. One day at a time. One day at a time.
I find that I've been praying more often, desperately searching for the soul-ful peace that does so much more than sleep. The 30 minute commute to work is a great time to just re-connect with Him, and find the strength to get through another day.

On the bright side, it's Christmas time! And EG is soo excited this year! We've been debating back and forth (AM and I) how to handle the whole Santa Situation. Neither of us grew up with Santa being a part of Christmas (or a very minor part), so we had planned that for our children as well. But I wanted to handle it in a way that doesn't ruin Christmas for others (like I did when I was a child. Sorry Krystle!) We decided on explaining the original story of St. Nicolas, and how people remember him by pretending to be Santa, and just not making a big deal of it. So, EG comes home from daycare, and tells me excitedly, "Mommy! Santa IS real! And he drives a car! But don't worry, Mommy, he was just pretending." Apparently, they had seen a man dressed up as Santa driving along, as the kids walked to the park. Very cute.

December has been filled with family parties and work parties. Hectic, but fun. We went to AM's work party at Copps, and were both really excited to take Emma skating for the first time. My mom had bought bobsled skates that fit over her boots, and we were going to try them out. But we should have tried them on at home first, with the boots on. They just didn't fit. So, no skating. But she went in the bouncy castle, on a mechanical bull, and got a balloon flower. IT was a blast. Last weekend, we had one extended family party at the retirement home that Alan's grandma lives in. I think Emma had enough of the family/not-at-home/too many people she didn't know, because about an hour into it, she had a melt down of extreme proportions. As in it took 4 adults taking turns to calm her down. Needless to say, we packed it in pretty quickly after that, and she fell asleep on the way home, after about 5 minutes in the car. We explained to her (later that day-can't do anything when she's crying so hard she's having trouble breathing) that if she's tired, or grumpy, or just wants to go home, she just needs to let us know. We will go home. I think she got it, because the following day, we had something at my mom's, and she was golden. She told us when she was tired, there was no fussing when we packed up, and she even cleaned up. Dekker Family Rule: EVERYONE needs to be having fun. Because if one person is grumpy, no one is having fun.

Playing with Aunty Esther's camera

Anyways, just wanted a space to vent, to catch up. And I'll leave you with some pictures, for you to enjoy (and to remind myself to find the JOY in the season, the PEACE in the chaos, and the LOVE in the madness.