When people hear me talk about my childhood, I’m often asked “Did you grow up in a commune?” I find that funny, because my parents weren’t hippies. We just didn’t have a lot, so we made do with what we had. We butchered our own animals, grew berries and vegetables, and were self-sufficient before self-sufficient was cool.
But these aren’t the things I remember about my childhood. I remember the fun, the games, playing outside, having a million cousins, and–most of all–having fun. We didn’t have a lot, but I also remember always loving Christmas. I don’t know how my parents did it. There was always a special gift just for us. We made homemade cocoa, sang christmas carols, hung out in p.j.s and tried to stay up all night for santa. We also attended midnight mass each year, and my brother puked EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR.
This Christmas, I really want to start creating those memories for my girls (minus the puking). Last night, Tim and I joined the roster of Santa’s elves and spent an enormous amount of time putting together two presents for the girls. One of which is way more dangerous-looking than I expected and could have only come from Santa (no parent in their right mind would get a toddler a gift that dangerous).
We’ve been tired and cranky this week because we had a couple of last-minute orders of jars and cupcakes (a good problem to have) and P got really sick. An hour-long appointment and three prescriptions later, we have a schedule for all of the medicines they put that poor girl on. This has been wearing our patience for each other thin, because we are worried about her and tired. We don’t deal well with tired.
So back to Christmas. We both agree we want to make Christmas special for our girls, so we sucked it up and began cleaning and moving furniture and screwing a million little parts with an allen wrench so that our girls will have that Christmas wonder. We’ve truly become parents. And somewhere in between the millionth J-6 piece and part B, we just looked at each other and smiled, because we’re parents–we get to do this now. It’s an amazing and awesome responsibility to put that wonder in a child’s eyes and to create magic and a lifetime of memories. It was worth every extra hour we stayed up. Waking up to that Christmas wonder, made Christmas the best holiday of my childhood, and I want the same for my girls, and someday this new baby.
Cancer Ever After 
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