The Christmas season, while full of beautiful twinkling lights and fun traditions, can be truly overwhelming — for anyone. Once you have children, though, the true stress of Christmas becomes blatantly apparent. There are gifts to buy, glass ornaments to be hidden away for the foreseeable future, Santa stories to, well, embellish, and this is all done with the understanding that neither you nor your partner has slept since the birth of your first child (no matter how old the kids are now).
Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, sure, but it's also a roller coaster of emotion for moms and dads. If you have kids, you'll be all too familiar with these 20 stages of the Christmas season as a parent.
Yes, yes, it’s time to start shopping. Noted.
He hides in a new place every morning, and your kids are behaving so Santa gets a good report.
Knew that wasn’t going to last.
You weren’t going to get your kid a hoverboard anyhow, but it would have helped if you even knew what the hot toys were. And if you started shopping in March.
Your friend’s kid looks adorable in that crocheted elf outfit, but really, who has time to plan all of that?
Hey, at least this way, the card will only be on your loved ones’ fridges for a few days, and your child, who is terrified of Santa, won’t be picked on for too long.
But your kids either don’t want to help or are only interested in the glass ornaments that you should probably just say goodbye to at this point.
And you realize, a few days before the holiday, that you haven’t thought about this one bit.
When do they go back to school again?
Too bad Santa can’t really help you out in this department.
You spend all year trying to get them away from the TV, but today you just can’t deal.
You make cocoa and read books in front of the fire, and remember just how great Christmas is, once you get past all of the chaos.
You high-five your partner and crash into bed.
You’re sleepy but so excited to watch your kids open their gifts.
You can also no longer see the floor around the tree, and now that you think of it, are your kids under there somewhere, too?
You give up in the end, because this is going to be a long day — why do you even bother buying the outfits?
Between getting the kids' table set up and organizing the exchange of interfamily gifts, your once-clean house (ha, just kidding) has become a complete mess, so you decide to just give up. It's all worth it for the glass of wine you'll get to indulge in before one of your children decides he desperately needs you.
You make a mental note to take all of the batteries out of their new toys, because, man, do you have a headache.
A messy house means everyone had fun, right?
And you can't help but think, even though Christmas is chaos — and thank goodness it's over until next December — you do love watching your sweet little babes experiencing the holidays.
Until next year.