People who aren’t parents might not understand how much it takes over your life. However, those of us with kids will (probably) relate. (Or maybe I’m just weird). Enjoy these ways to tell who is a parent this holiday season, aside from the glazed-over, sleepless look on their face.
You argue with your spouse and kids over the exact day when you can start decorating for Christmas (and after COVID, it got to be about a month earlier!).- You went for a felt Christmas tree with felt ornaments so your kid will hopefully play with that one instead of playing with the actual tree and breaking all the ornaments.
- Your tree is currently in a playpen so the kids have a harder time getting to it and messing it up.
- You figure you will end up as a statistic for your house catching on fire due to a Christmas-related incident.
- You know where all of the Santas are, what time they’ll be out, and which ones give the best “performance.”
- Your explanation for why Santa is still real even though their preschool buddy says he’s not is perfectly logical, even by a child’s standards.
- You have a good bribe going with your older kids so that they won’t tell the younger kids about whether Santa is real or not (he totally is, for those out there who still believe).
- You have a set time when your kids can wake you up on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought them and you taught them how to read that number on the clock.
- You still end up getting up at 4 a.m. because your kids don’t feel like listening to what you told them about watching the clock until it gets to the 7.
- You know how to be the first parent to get whatever cool toy is out and you have a detailed plan for how to obtain that toy while hiding it from your kids until Christmas.
- You have a special place in your house where you hide the gifts and an explanation ready for the nosy child who finds your careful hiding spot.
- You hate whoever writes the scripts for the Christmas pageants with a passion that burns hotter than a thousand suns.
- Conversations with your kids go like, “No, you can’t lick the snow off of that lawn chair.”
- You tell your kids to wear their coats. They go to school without a coat because they “don’t need one.” You get an email from the teacher asking if you need help affording a coat. “No, my kid is just getting an attitude and learning what happens when they choose not to wear a coat.”
- You taught your kids, “Jingle bells, Batman smells,” and realized this was a poor life decision.
- You sing, “Bells on bobtail ring,” and get crazy looks from your kids who are currently singing some conglomeration of “bells on Bob’s tail ring.” “Mommy, who is Bob?”
- There are a million weird questions that come out because of the lyrics to Christmas songs, which cause you to realize you never understood what you have been singing about all these years. (“What do they mean by ‘bells on bobtail ring?'”)
- You started using the Naughty or Nice List as a threat to get the kids to behave starting at Easter. “Hey, you remember Santa is still watching you, right?”
- You feel like there isn’t enough eggnog in the world to get you through Christmas dinner with a bunch of kids and cousins running around with toys, crying over how they didn’t get what they wanted, and getting all sugared up on Grandma’s Christmas cookies.
Happy holidays! I’m sure you’re all tired out there but you wouldn’t want it any other way.
