Day: December 14, 2017

Tonight’s the night. Last school Christmas program ever for our family. After fifteen total performances between preschool and 1st–3rd grades, L will close it out this evening when she stars as Ms. Jingle, the mayor of Jingle Bell Hills.[1] She has one of the three biggest roles and has taken to it in classic L form. She had all her lines memorized before Thanksgiving weekend was over. She’s added a little bit of flair to them over the past week. Not sure if that was because of urging of her teachers or it is all on her. She really gets everything out of her lines that she can, though. She’s also frustrated because some of her classmates still don’t have all their lines down.[2] I’m sure it will all be fine tonight.

With the Christmas program coming tonight, I should probably offer an update on the state of Christmas spirit in our house. As you would expect with our girls’ ages, it has dipped significantly this year.

M rolls her eyes and mutters “Ohmygod” under her breath at things she used to go crazy for. She wants nothing to do with the traditional kids Christmas shows, although she will pay some attention to Elf and Christmas Vacation. Her gift requests are decidedly teen: expensive headphones, new shoes, new clothes. She’s repeated her crappiness from last year where she ruins where our Elf is for her sisters. I knocked that shit off early this year, and for the most part she has little interest in where he ends up each morning. Although this morning, when he was in the refrigerator door, she jumped and laughed and put a warning sign on the fridge door after her sisters had seen him.

C isn’t quite to M’s level of disinterest yet, but it’s certainly coming. She’ll sit and watch part of Christmas shows, but generally disappear to do other things. She’s been doing some Christmas crafts on her own. She has also asked for very practical gifts: she wants a new desk and some new sheets. She and L also got all excited about making gifts for each other on their day out of school Tuesday.

And L is hanging in there, but I can’t help but think it’s mostly for show and for my benefit. She and I faithfully watch a Christmas show every night, although she finds the classics like Rudolph boring and prefers to watch all the Food Network holiday baking shows.[3] She excitedly looks for Elfie each day, although she doesn’t write him cute little notes like she used to. L is the pleaser of the group, so I figure she’s always going to have Christmas spirit just because she knows it makes me happy.

We have an Advent calendar on the wall that uses a felt candy cane to mark the current day. The girls used to fight over who got to move it. Now some days it doesn’t get moved until well into the evening, and I think L has kind of taken over that duty.

And only L has requested driving around and looking at lights in the evening.

As I mentioned earlier this week our big family Christmas gift is going to Denver to spend Christmas week with family out there. The girls are CRAZY excited about that. We fly out on Christmas day, and their cousins[4] do not know that we’re coming. We bought Santa hats to wear when we surprise them at their front door. Our girls CAN NOT WAIT for that! Which, as I think about it more, means they are getting a more mature view of Christmas. They’re excited to make someone else’s day special and memorable. So I guess we’ve done something right.