I’m pretty sure that most people feel exhausted after Christmas, at least if they are parents. We consider ourselves to be ones who like to keep it simple, but still, there is no way around cleaning up a room full of wrapping paper and then attempting to make a dinner that is usually more complicated because, well, hey, it’s Christmas. The boys ran around from toy-to-toy to the point that they would either play with something for five minutes or fight about whose turn it was. Add to that that Michael and I spent about 4 hours on Christmas eve staying up late to finish off the first season of Murder One, and you have a pretty tired group all around.
But that’s what the days after Christmas are for, and lucky us, we were able to take time off because Michael’s out of school. We hit up Home Depot on the 26th to get paint for our bedroom (Martha Stewart Sharkey Grey) and bathroom (Martha Stewart Glass of Milk), and are spending most of this week finishing off the changes that we can afford to make in our master bedroom: paint, new bamboo roman shades, and putting up a flat screen tv we got from parents for Christmas (thanks, Mom and Dad!).
The paint is 80% done, and already it feels more like our own place. Although I’m not big on spending tons of money on your home and like to DIY as much as possible, I have to say that this process has shown me how much objects and things speak silent messages as to who we are or what we are about. Staring at a loud wallpaper or a fading paint color was either seriously irritating me or dragging me down – it felt like I was living in someone else’s house. I can’t re-do everything that “isn’t me” at once, and am content with and grateful for what we do have, but it’s nice to have small changes here and there that echo my own tastes and sentiments.
Even though Christmas felt crazy, the hopes I had had for some of our gifts were realized – we got a set of wooden blocks for the boys at a good deal, and they, along with a Goodwill vintage Tonka dump truck, have been played with a lot. I put away the Lincoln logs and magnetic building blocks immediately, figuring that it’s probably best to have one building set at a time out. Now that we are trying to teach Eli the days of the week, I may try to have certain building sets assigned to certain days to give him an idea of how days work.
And I can’t help it, but I’m already thinking about things I want to do in the year to come. Are you? What are some of your goals/desires this year?
