You know how sometimes you have those Mommy moments where you can truly feel like "Super Mom?" I'm talking about the days when everyone wakes up happy, you have a good breakfast, a playdate at the park, an awesome nap, some good quality learning time as well as play time and then a healthy home cooked dinner? Those are the days when you give yourself a mental high five and congratulate yourself on finally nailing this whole parenting thing.
And then there are the Mommy Failure Days. The ones where the baby wakes up at four AM and you realize you are our of coffee and the only thing for breakfast is some slightly stale bread for toast. The kid you arranged a playdate with? Yeah, he turns out to be a biter. And no one wants to nap and you're so exhausted you want to cry. Finally you cave and let your kid sit in front of Sesame Street and order a pizza for dinner. Those are the days you wonder why the hell someone gave you a kid and you wonder how much his therapy is going to cost one day.
Be honest, we all have both of these days!
Well, in a moment of "Super Mommy" I decide to do an Advent Calendar for L this year. I have one from when I was a kid so I spent an evening using a Gold Pen on Green paper to write out activities for us to do each day. The activities ranged from "Making Salt Ornaments" to "Bake a Christmas Treat" to "Go see the Christmas Lights". My intentions were good and pure and I had visions of us rushing each morning to open the calendar and find out what fun thing was in store for us that day.
The idea of the advent calendar? Total Super Mommy moment.
Actually doing the advent calendar? Total Mommy Failure. Like big time.
I tried, I really did. And the first five days or so we did pretty good. But I overestimated my ability to pull this off while also dealing with a newborn. And after day five things kind of petered out. And I feel guilty about it, but at the same time,L is young enough that he doesn't really care and he won't remember this. And I have been trying to do the activities that were in there, just not one everyday. So today, we did our Day three activity, which was to make salt ornaments. And doing this with L gave me that super mommy feeling because he was so excited about it, so who cares if it was ten days late? Better late then never, right?
Salt Dough ornaments are super easy. Two cups flour, one cup salt and one cup water. Bake for four hours at about two hundred degrees. Easy, cheap, and memories that last a lifetime... you can't beat that!
Once they were "cooked" and cooled we pulled out our paints and donned old t-shirts.
And here is our final product! I think this at least partially makes up for the whole advent calendar failure, right?
I am behind on our Advent activities as well and I don't have a newborn ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Hunger Games suggestion. I am starting it tonight!