The Dazzled, Frazzled Christmas Mom, Part 1

As I sit in Starbucks for my last 20 kid-free moments this morning (BTW: that is NOT a picture of me...I can only WISH I was cool enough to pull off a bird on my finger, or that my fingers were that nicely manicured, for that matter!) I was pondering a title for this blog post. I didn't want you all to think I was completely losing my frazzled mind.  While all of the Christmastime running around, and cookie baking, and card mailing, and present wrapping, and house cleaning and gray snowy days have perpetuated a couple of very funny (though not at the time!) moments on my behalf (see my stories below), I do also love the festivity of the season. While the running around and hecticness seem to bring about crabbiness in some people, it seems that there are also a lot of extra smiles, and friendly strangers and Merry Christmases as well. And that is where I am...dazzled by the celebratory nature of Christmas and frazzled by the running around.

So let me share with you 2 of my most frazzled moments in the last couple of weeks...

STORY #1: A Botched Cookie Swap


We'll start with my MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) meeting last week!

For those of you who were there and caught a glimpse of my crying in the corner, yes, I was having an official Christmastime meltdown. Here is how the meltdown came about...

While the MOPS Christmas meeting was a lot of fun, you have to laugh at the irony of all of these moms, already schluffing in car seats, toddlers, diaper bags, cups diapers, strollers, jackets, hats, boots, and gloves who were now also carrying decorations for tables, $3 Christmas presents, food for the breakfast buffet and cookies for a cookie swap (if you decided to participate, which I did after my husband agreed to make the cookies the night before!).

SOOO....I was running late, I pulled up to the door, left the car running, pulled the girls out of the car, my gifts, my bags and my cookies, and ran into the church. As I entered the meeting room one of the moms saw the crazed, hurried look on my face, along with my girls at my side and bags hanging from every appendage and said,

"Hey! Can I lighten your load?"
"YESSSS!" "PLEASE!"

I handed her the tray of cookies I had baked for the swap, set my bags down and grabbed my girls to go check them into childcare.

Ella's dropoff was painless...she usually runs away with her coat on without so much as a goodbye.

Ava on the other hand.

Do I even have to tell you....

SCREAMING.

"MOMMY. MOMMY. MOMMY! DON'T LEAVE ME! I WANT TO GO HOME!!!"

as she clings to my neck and wraps her legs around my stomach.

Argh.

The childcare worker holds out her arms. "She'll be fine. It will probably be easier if you just leave."

I hand her off and I leave, though I'm feeling emotional ( PMS induced emotions if you MUST know!) and a bit reluctant.

I run back out to my car which is still idling at the front door of the church, park it and run into the meeting.

As I walk through the back door to the meeting I look down at the cookie exchange table. First of all, ALL of the other cookies are individually packaged by the dozen with printed recipes attached.

Whoops.

SECOND OF ALL....my cookies were not on the table.

CRAP.

I do a quick glance around the room and my eyes land on the breakfast buffet that all of the very hungry mommas are helping themselves too.

My eyes get big. My face drops. CRAP.

Yes. Yes, my friends. My cookie swap cookies landed on the buffet table and were being happily indulged in.

I run over to the buffet, not making eye contact with anyone, swoop my cookies off of the counter, right out from under the reach of a hungry mom and fly into the kitchen with them. I find paper plates and saran wrap and manage to individually, though quite unfestively and certainly without a printed recipe, wrap my hello dollies on 4 separate plates.

I go back out into the meeting room, set my cookies down and my friend Rose comes over to ask how I'm doing.

I burst into tears.

"It's not about the cookies," I blubber. Snif. Snif. "REally. I'm just tired. And the cookies. And the girls."

Rose just smiles and give me a hug. It's all I really needed. I was on the verge of tears for the rest of the day.

Please don't' feel sad for me. It's kind of funny now that I"m not PMSing anymore.



Alright...mommy free time is up....if you want to hear silly story #2 you'll have to read tomorrow!