You know the one where you post the right thing to the wrong blog, or the wrong thing to the right blog? I’ll pretend that sentence makes some sense to me (it sort of does).
Anyway.
If you just received a missive in your email inbox about pretend aeroplane shenanigans, it’s because I’m too tired to be trusted with a computer at the moment - and yet here I am writing this.
Go figure.
Somehow there are only three days left until Christmas. How did that even happen? I’m working on Monday and Tuesday, and then have the usual days off.
It’s going to be an odd one this year - two of our children will not be with us on Christmas day for the first time in our lives together. My other half is just about keeping a lid on her emotions. I avoid the subject entirely if I can.
All of those lines from movies about enjoying childhood while it’s around you because it doesn’t last for long are so true - and yet I don’t think you really realise until you’re on the other side of it - remembering the children struggling to sleep on Christmas Eve, the excited shouts in the morning that “Santa’s been!”, and the utter devastation in the lounge an hour later.
I won’t miss walking through town in sub-zero temperatures on Christmas morning while my daughters learned to roller-skate - holding their hands, picking them up, and promising them vast quantities of hot chocolate if we could go home soon.
I won’t miss the year I built a climbing frame in the back garden in sub-zero temperatures either - struggling with frost-bitten hands and feet while the children stood next to each other in the window, watching and waiting.
Who knows… perhaps Christmases yet to come will be more outward than inward looking - spending time with friends, rather than building playmobil stables, LEGO pirate hideouts, or listening to complaints about how you could possibly be so good at whatever video game is on the television.
(don’t let the children know that we all grew up playing video games throughout our entire adolescence, because the internet didn’t exist yet).