My Kid Circus

For most of my life the week before Christmas was my favorite week of the year. The fun, the festivities, the anticipation.

Now I find the week after Christmas is my favorite time. The time of peace. The time for exhaling.

We had a wonderful Christmas, no doubt about it, but I find myself happy that I can revisit the memories from sitting quietly on my bed while the kids are happily busying themselves around me. This is where I am finding the Christmas magic.

Here are some of my favorites from this year. Loved our angels, king, and kings attendant. Had a very successful visit from Santa even after a last minute very crucial list change. Got to spend time with most of our most favorite grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Merry Christmas indeed!

Awww, I shouldn’t have been so quick to say that dads get all the glory.

Our orthodontist is having a contest right now asking the kids to write about their hero.

They might not win the contest, but they are winners to me!

Halloween to Thanksgiving are always such a frantic rush of activities. I mostly love this, but it can be hard to take a breath. Pumpkins, festivals, and parties to the end.

Halloween was great fun. For the first time ever, Zac did not trick-or-treat with the rest of us, but since he was with our dear friends, I thought that was the next best thing. It was so fun to see him with his lifelong friends dressed up as the Scooby Doo gang.

Drew was Scarlet Spider (Spider-Man’s clone), Hannah was an astronaut (thank you Space Camp), Kai was a Dragon, and Kaitlyn dressed up as her dad (I don’t think there could be a higher compliment than your child wanting to dress up like you for Halloween. It was amazingly cute, and I had just the smallest twinge of jealousy. Dads get all the glory).

I have to hand it to her, she had it down. Black t-shirt, Dragon Army hat and name tag, iPad, black watch, and even a wedding ring. Love it!

At any rate, it was a fantastic night of candy, family, and friends and a good time was had by all.

This was quickly followed by going with the girls to Girl Scout Camp. I was a girl scout growing up, but this is actually the first year that my girls have been scouts. I have been SO happy to be back in the scouting world and quickly raised my hand to be a camp chaperone. I’m so glad that I did.

First of all, the cabins we stayed in and the dining hall that we got to eat in were drastically different (ahem, better) than the tents and fire-cooked meals that I remember from camping growing up. It was also just great, positive, fun. Singing, dancing, crafts, skits, and laughter. These girls offered me a lot of hope for the future. They were so thoughtful and kind to each other, and every time I started to intervene in a conversation or event, another girl would step up and say whatever I had felt like I needed to say. They held each other accountable for being kind and thoughtful friends, and I loved every minute.

I had only two days to recover from that before we left to take Drew on his Harry Potter trip. Just as we took Zac by himself when he finished reading the series, we took Drew after he finished reading the books a couple of weeks ago.

One on one time with any of the kids is always a treasure, and this was no exception. We had an absolutely fantastic time enjoying all things Harry Potter with a few Spider-Man rides in between. Highlight of my trip was riding the Hippogriff roller coaster with Drew, 17 times!! We laughed and we laughed as we rode over and over and over again.

Going to the Blue Man Group was Drew’s favorite part of the trip. And maybe the 10 butterbeers he consumed over the few days…

This was quickly followed by both boy’s birthdays. They were well celebrated, and I can’t believe that they are now 14 and 12, which is just parallel universe kind of crazy.

That led us right into 5 days at the mountains to celebrate Thanksgiving.

We had 23 of our favorite people there to celebrate. We ate, we laughed, we told stories, and played some “Heads Up”.

As always, we were acutely aware of how much we have to be thankful for!

I suppose I was in a lucky generation. At school we had tornado drills and fire drills, but I missed the “duck and cover” drills that my parents had to do at school, and I missed the “lockdown drills” that my children currently have to do.

I was free to have nightmares about my house burning down without any added baggage of larger terrors in the world.

Like most parents, I have a lot of feelings about this practice. On one hand, I understand the requirement living in our present day and age. On the other hand, I wonder if it actually provides any more usefulness in an emergency than the “duck and cover” drills would have provided if the actuality of a nuclear bomb had occurred. There are so many different variables, so many “what if’s”, that this drill might not end up being much help if the unthinkable did occur.

This year, I was very worried about my new kindergartener who already has trouble going to school. I was afraid that he would just find a new (huge) reason not to want to get out of the car in the morning. Frankly these drills also have a bit of that effect on me. Luckily he was blessed with a loving and understanding teacher, who presented the situation beautifully. He came home telling me that they practiced what they would do if there was ever a “tornado of butterflies” coming through the hallway. As he laughed, he told me that they would do the same thing if some baby tigers got loose in the school. He found the whole experience quite fun, and I was relieved, even as I was sad knowing that this innocence will be temporary.

My third grader, however, had a different experience. She didn’t realize it was a drill. I feel sure that her teachers did emphasize that it was a drill, but she doesn’t always process important details, and apparently this was one of them. So she was terrified. She told me that she was saying, “I’m too young to die”. She said she felt so scared that she was frozen. She didn’t realize it was a drill until it was all over. She then told me that she knew that if she was in the bathroom when this happened that she was supposed to lock the stall and stand on the toilet, and then said there was a chance that she would have to jump out of a window and asked if I be mad if she had to do that.

There are a million occasions as a mom that I have dreamed of putting my kids in a safe bubble and never letting them out, but this conversation made me seriously consider the practicality of going through with it.

For several days after school, they have wanted to play “lockdown drill.” They take turns being the teacher and reporting the threat level. Then they quickly close the blinds and gather up together quietly in the corner. I’m trained in play therapy, so I understand the use of play in children as they try to make sense of big things in the world, so I let it play out without interfering, but it hurt my heart. It hurts my heart to watch them go through it again and again and to have to know that this is part of their formative childhood experience.

This is not the reality that I want my children growing up in.

Being a parent is so hard. It is hard in a million different ways. But for me, I think that the growing understanding that I have to continue letting go in thousands of ways as they grow has got to be the hardest so far. The growing understanding that I have to send parts of my heart, parts that feel as much a physical part of me as my arms and legs, out into this terrifying world shatters me.