Mommy Sucks at Christmas Parenting

I don’t know what it is about Christmas this year. I am certainly not in any kind of funk or anything but I am not feeling overwhelmed with the Christmas spirit. I have missed all of the work Christmas parties because they all seem to be on Friday’s and I don’t work on Friday’s. I did find some awesome gifts for people but even that didn’t get me all excited. Here I am 4 days from Christmas and the most I can muster is a cool I have the next 13 days off in a row smile. I don’t know if I am still getting used to this three 10 hour a day schedule at work or what.

Unfortunately, this has turned into me being a crappy holiday parent. C is about 2 ¼ years old and well it never occurred to me until a month or so ago that I needed to teach her what Christmas is; and that she was old enough to understand the concept. Another major parenting fail is that we haven’t had her going to Sunday School- that right there would have solved my problem. So when this finally occurred to me I went home that night and found all of her books about Christmas and we started reading them repeatedly. I really do want her to understand Christmas as the religious holiday before we move onto the secular parts of the season. So we have been reading a book about baby Jesus’ birth. She can now identify the most important of the people involved (Mary, Joseph, Jesus, etc) and she keeps dragging the birthday hats out of the decorations box in the office and asking for birthday cake so something tells me I’ve got her on the right track.

We finally put up the Christmas tree on Sunday night and it has pretty twinkling lights but no ornaments. However, C hasn’t even seen the lights because we haven’t turned them on for her. You see what I am saying? I am totally sucking at holiday season parenting right now. I did get her something cool for Christmas and I sure she will enjoy the day but I can’t help but feel that I failed her in some way. This is her first Christmas that she can sort of understand and Mom dropped the ball.

I think I need to go to Zoolights tonight, watch Elf tomorrow, do some major baking on Friday, and maybe, just maybe, I will be more prepared for Christmas come Sunday. I haven’t even watched my requisite Christmas movies whilst wrapping presents yet. Every year I watch Love, Actually and The Notebook- which is not a Christmas movie at all but I watch it now once a year. Last year the Husband and I watched Saving Private Ryan while wrapping presents and even that felt more like Christmas. Whatever is the matter with me?