If your house is anything like mine, your dryer lint has gone from being pink and bespeckled with glitter, to being red and bespeckled with glitter, signaling that Christmas is finally upon us.
Also, that this family has an unsustainable glitter habit.
This is a magical time. Everything is festively decorated and there’s an extra crackle of excitement in the air. Sprinkle kids into the mix, and that excitement gets dialed up by about a million.
After all, most kids spend the entire year in (not so quiet) anticipation, plotting and planning how to get Santa to bring them everything they desire while just toeing the line between naughty and nice.
That is unless your kids are toddlers. Then you can forget about that line all together. There is no pretending to be good with toddlers. You can’t bribe good behavior out of a three-year-old, or threaten it out with the prospect of ending up on the naughty list (trust me, bribery and threats are the backbone of my parenting philosophy, she sobs into her messy living room).
Also, you can’t give a two-foot-tall person approximately three feet of cookies and expect them to have any chill what-so-ever when it comes to anything Santa related.
I mean, my toddler spends every day sneaking up to our advent calendar and setting it to Christmas Eve and then exclaiming that today is Christmas and asking where Santa left her presents.
No. Chill.
It isn’t really much different than her normal day-to-day lack of chill, to be honest. And I contemplated that one day while listening to the holiday station on the car radio while trying to drown out my oldests pleas for ice cream from the back seat. I noticed a common theme among some of my favorite Christmas songs…
I present to you all the Christmas carols that are forever tainted by raising a toddler.
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Please Come Home for Christmas, The Eagles – Bells will be ringing? Yeah, I hear them. I hear every single one of them. My toddler just rang each one and ran away, only to run back and ring them again.
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Grandma Got Runover by a Reindeer, Elmo and Patsy – “IS THAT WHAT’S WRONG WITH HER FACE?”
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Do You Hear What I Hear, Harry Simeone – “Do you? Do you hear it, mommy? Mom, mom, do you hear it? What is that? Mom? Mom? MOM?!”
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Little Drummer Boy, Harry Simeone – BANG ON THIS, BANG ON THAT, PRETEND ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING IS A DRUM… BANG BANG BANG.
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Baby it’s Cold Outside, by like, everyone – “But I don’t wannnnnna wear a jacket!!!”
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Silent Night, Joseph Mohr – LOL, JK
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All I Want for Christmas is You, Mariah Carey – “I want a puppy.” “Oh, and a firetruck.” “And, and, and a talking Marshall from Paw Patrol!” “And THAT! What IS that? I want it!”
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Deck the Halls, Thomas Oliphant – If your kid isn’t “Fa la la la-ing” at full volume is it even Christmas?
HAPPY HOLIDAYS FRIENDS!
