grrlTravels

Decorating with determination

For the past two or three years, Christmas has not been celebrated in my house with festive decorations. Two years ago, there was a good excuse--I was a zombie. There were no decorations, there were no cards or presents, no Christmas cheer or good will either. There wasn't really anything more than some moaning, a couple of long bouts of crying, and a desperate email to my cousin whose son is 4 months older than mine which simply said, "When will I feel normal again, if ever???" E. was a month old.

Last year, I can't remember what happened. We were busy, and there was the residual tiredness. I was still breastfeeding, and breastfeeding really took it out of me. E. was becoming more fun, but he was also fascinated by EVERYTHING, including the cats, all of his baby toys, cheerios, and random bits of lint. We had gone on vacation over Thanksgiving and all gotten desperately ill upon coming home. We were sick for a good week, really, truly, horribly sick. The decorating seemed like a long, involved process requiring lots of work with very little payoff in the end. K. finally roused himself a week before Christmas and went out with E. to find a tree. We put the lights on it, which amused E. to no end, and called it a day.

This year I knew early on that my excuses were cobwebby and withered. We took E. somewhere, and he got a glimpse of some Christmas lights. He was hooked. So we drug out the boxes and emptied them on the floor, determined to use every last ornament and string of lights. In fact, we have supplemented the previous collection with many new purchases. (Don't let me near anything fiber optic. As I've stated before, tacky is sometimes good, especially at Christmas.) Then we found out about the neighborhood decorating contest, and in addition to the interior, suddenly we were decorating outside too.

It's been fun. E.'s first words each morning are, "On. On! ON!" while pointing toward the tree. I like the decorations once they are up. I simply refuse to think about taking them all back down, one of the most depressing parts of the post-holidays blues. The house is all sparkly and festive and twinkly and fuzzy and jolly. It's fun to be home. I can't say I feel "normal" this year, but normal was really just a hallucination in the mind of a sleep-deprived zombie anyway.