As a new mother I have been anticipating my twins first
Christmas for a very long time. I was so
excited that they would be 6 months by Christmas and would be able to interact
a little bit to make this experience a lot of fun! In my head I had the perfect scenario and
could not wait for everything to take place.
Eventually Christmas started to get closer and more people
were asking me about my plans. I told
everyone about our tradition of traveling 45 minutes to my hometown to spend
Christmas Eve with my family for dinner and Christmas morning. On Christmas morning we open presents and
then we get ready to travel one and a half hours to my husband’s hometown. I could hardly get the story out before
people would constantly say “Katrina…you are crazy, you have babies now, they
HATE riding in the car and there is so much that you need to pack to stay the
night away from home. This tradition
will not last, you need to set your own”
Of course, the excitement slowly began to leave and I began
to get a little nervous about our family tradition as a new family of
four. I knew that I could manage this, I
was NOT going to be one of “those” moms that took three hours just to leave the
house with her kids, my babies were not going to control our traditions….SO I THOUGHT….
I made homemade baby food the night before so the babies
would have enough food to eat while we were away. I packed all of their clothes for the days we
would be away, in addition to several “mess up” clothes. I had everything prepped and ready to go so
we could leave on time.
My husband begins to pack up our mid-size SUV with the
clothes for the babies, rock n plays (for the babies to sleep in), bumbo’s,
bottles, homemade baby food, 1 box of diapers (88 count….hoping this is enough
to last 5 days), the dog, dog crate, dog food,.
As the SUV is getting packed, we realize that we do not have room for
our presents to take to our families.
WAIT WHAT?!?! I’ve
been planning this trip for over a week and I didn’t even think about all of
the presents that needed to be packed into the car. How could I forget something so simple? (Mommy brain is real). Meanwhile, I have to get to my hometown by
7pm because I have dinner plans with my best friends.
We unpack the car, repack the car with Christmas presents
and I head to dinner and decide that I will just come back that evening for us
to try again in the morning, and while I’m in my hometown I will drop off
presents with my family.
The next morning, we begin the day at 6am, we feed the
babies, get them dressed, have “our” family Christmas, and at 9:30am, we are
heading out of the door…and I realize that I have become one of “those” moms. Preparing to leave has taken me 3.5 hours, I
cannot believe this has happened to me.
We travel 45 minutes to my hometown and the babies travel
perfectly. We have our traditional
Christmas Dinner with friends and family.
I am enjoying every moment of the family time, but deep inside I am dreading
packing everything back up tomorrow morning to head on our next 1.5 hour
journey. I am excited to go visit our
family, but I do not want to be defeated with all of the packing again.
The next morning we had Christmas with my family, and begin
getting the babies ready so we can head out on our next journey. I get the babies dressed, my husband begins
to pack the car (we’ve learned that we can’t fit anything extra), so we leave
everything with my mom to retrieve at a later date. However, packing the car, feeding the babies
and leaving still takes us 3 hours. At
this time I have no idea why this is taking us so long to get out of the
house. We only have a certain amount of
things to pack back up, but somehow I am still “that” mom
We travel 1.5 hours to visit my husband’s family. The drive goes very well. My nightmare of babies hating their car seats
are now gone, I feel like my babies did really well after being in the car for
two days in a row. We arrive to my
husband’s family and we are late for dinner. I feel horrible because I hate being late and
my tardiness has messed up another family tradition.
After we eat dinner, we open presents with family and spend
overdue family time together. My
nervousness is starting to subside as we do not have anywhere else to be by a
certain time for the babies first Christmas.
I am finally able to sit back and enjoy Christmas and not worry about
anything else.
After we finally arrive back home four days later and exhausted. I begin to
reflect back on the experience and ask myself will I do this again next
year? YES I WILL! We loved the
memories that were created, even though it took us forever to get to each
destination, it was so worth it. For
now, our families tradition will remain the same and I am hoping we do not find
a reason to change it in the future.
Next year, I will plan better on what to pack, and I will
have more experience with traveling with the babies…who will then be toddlers
eek!
I know in a few years we will most likely implement Santa
Claus and that will open up an entire new challenge that I am not prepared
for.
Please let me know in comments any tips you have that have
helped you get out of the house faster and implement Santa Claus while still
visiting family.
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