I Got the One Week to Christmas Blues....

This elf has been thrice thwarted.   I've made a list.  I put it on my computer on a spread sheet.  My computer died Friday.  It is under warranty but will be away at Santa's workshop for the next two weeks.   I made a second list, I wrote it on paper using an old fashioned writing utensil called a pen.  I left the list in the car.  The car decided Saturday to pay its respects to the car equivalent of Santa's workshop and won't be back until Tuesday at the earliest.   When I did go to the store, I discovered one of my children had helpfully brought in my purse into the house and somehow taken out my wallet, ergo I had no means to purchase anything the one time I actually made it out to look.   0 for 3, I may be busted back down to AA for this Christmas season. 

Now, it is up to my brain to remember all those good thoughts I had on one of the two lists, and to eventually figure out how to take care of those lists. 

It is times like these I am glad to be Catholic, because I can do that whole 12 days of Christmas thing legitimately.   It's not that I procrastinated or was overwhelmed or anything.  I was celebrating the season "properly."  Yeah that's what I'm doing.  Right.  My kids won't buy it either.  

My big issue is what.  I look in the stores and catalogues waiting for lightning to strike; but so far, nothing has caught me up with its whimsy where I'm imagining the kiddos opening it and feeling that rush of delight at having an unspoken wish granted. 

It may be that the problem is unique to having 9 children.   Within the confines of these walls, having had kids in the home since 93, we have amassed a rather extensive collection of toys for both girls and boys.   I'd wager we have almost every conceivable toy already somewhere in the house.  They may be scattered, they may be broken, they may be the wrong color, size or model but we own them somehow. 

Take art supplies: if you collected all the markers in this house, you'ld have six boxes full though many of them would consist solely of black, a muddy yellow, green and orange, because blue, purple and red are the favorites for use and get dried out most often.  Likewise if you collected all the crayons, at least three of those big boxes that came with the sharpener would be filled; again with a heavy show of force by gray, white, black, green and orange.  I could make the same case for hot wheels, knights, barbies (at least 75 strong, all undressed). 

Supplemental purchases we've done.  I've bought clothing for Barbies. One year I even spent two nights of my life welding those too tight shirts and skirts to the ladies.   Within five minutes of the discovery, the girls had returned all Barbies and their friends to the au naturale state.  Legos don't add to the existing pile, they become new piles.  Sometimes, more is just too much.  I've been threading as much as possible, but it feels self defeating to then go shopping to create moreness.  

I want them to have whimsy, I want to feel it too.   But all this defense in depth of toys means Christmas consists of figuring out what each child wants that we can manage that we don't already in some capacity have such that giving it would be redundant and anti-climactic.   Some of my offspring have discerned this dilemia and come up with helpful suggestions via their wish lists.  The proposed items are creative, thoughtful, meaningful, clever, unique and guaranteed to not be in any way, replications of what has been received before. 

But I have informed them and Santa that we are not in the market for either a pony or a dog.

So this elf is flunking elf school; and worse than that, on Wednesday, they all get to go to the dentist.