Even though we haven't done hardly any decorating for Christmas or hardly anything around the house, I still wanted to do SOME fun things with Dane this year. He wouldn't care at all if we didn't do anything--he's happy just seeing the big blow-up Santa on the corner while we drive Tommy to work--but there are just so many cute things to do with kids this time of year, I didn't want to miss out on them just because we were moving.
Of course, we go and do these fun things and then Dane is completely wild or uninterested and I remember that most things aren't very fun with a toddler. You have to lower your expectations of what they're going to get out of something--and what YOU'RE going to get out of it since you're chasing the wild child instead of enjoying yourself. So, the debate continues: is it really worth it to go to do fun things with your kid when you'd all probably be happier at home without disturbing the regular routine?
My conclusion: Even with all the frustrating outings we've had lately (see below), I still am glad we have been doing them, because I want to go do things for myself. If Dane's only partly enjoying it, too bad for him. I want to go see Christmas lights and Nativities--and I want Dane to be excited about it too, but if I only enjoy it because he's enjoying it, usually none of us will be happy.
Exhibit A: A nearby stake center (for the Allen stake) has a giant Nativity collection that they fill up their cultural hall with one weekend in December. They even have a live Nativity with people acting it out. I thought it would be a great way to talk to Dane about how Christmas is about Jesus being born. But this is what most of the half hour we spent there looked like:
The only time he sat still was when we were collapsed in chairs listening to the beautiful Christmas music played by the volunteers and Dane commandeered the row ahead of us and crawled around on all the chairs so no one else could sit there.
But really, the Nativities were beautiful. There was one that represented the entire little town of Bethlehem and took up an entire long wall of the cultural hall! I loved it.
I love, love, love this painting. I have seen it before, but it made me almost teary to look at this and think about Mary surrounded by the hosts of angels supporting her on that night. It's such a beautiful image.
This one reminded me of some of Grandma and Grandpa Murphy's Christmas decorations that I remember from Connecticut!
Verdict: Totally worth it still, for me and Tommy, even if Dane didn't care at all.
We didn't bring the stroller--I vetoed it because usually Dane will get out and then insist on pushing it around into everyone he sees. But maybe we should have because instead Dane just ran around, cackling like a madman, through the crowds of THOUSANDS of people, refusing to hold our hands or let us hold him in any way (we kept trying to hold his hood but he'd throw himself to the ground and scream). I was sure he was going to run away and get kidnapped or lost. We tried to enjoy ourselves and see all the vendors and people there.
There was a cute gingerbread house contest area, where people brought their own homemade ones--I LOVED this Star Wars-themed one.
After about 45 minutes of wrestling with the crazy toddler, we finally saw them light the tree, snapped a few pictures, and then grumblingly headed home to put Dane to bed.
Exhibit C: This was a surprise family date that I wanted to give Tommy as a present, at Ikea of all places! I've taken Dane to eat lunch at Ikea a few times, because kids eat free on Tuesdays there. One time when we were there, there were signs all over about their "Swedish Julbord Dinner"--a Christmas feast! I thought Tommy would love this, because Danish and Swedish food are very similar and it might be really fun for him to revisit his Christmases he spent in Denmark. The dinner was scheduled for one specific night (the night before our move, actually, which worked out great because our whole kitchen was packed up so we'd have to eat out anyway). Tommy's team all got off work early that day (because of their crazy week), so I picked him up early and acted like we'd spend an hour at Ikea checking out the furniture before our move the next day, and then we'd all go on to our date. So we wandered around for a while looking at stuff, and then, boom, we ended up right at the cafeteria right at the right time and I told him what we were really doing! He was definitely surprised and we were all thrilled about eating more Swedish meatballs and food.
A lot of the food was herring and other fishy things, which none of us were really in the mood for. I have the excuse of being pregnant, at least. But there was some ham and meatballs and potatoes and lots of other really good foods that we stocked up on. Tommy was sad that they didn't have legit "flaeskesteg" ("fleskastie"), one of his favorite Danish Christmas foods, but they just had ham instead.
Some delicious almond cake.
It was cute--partway through the meal, a chorus of girls singing Santa Lucia songs came in and serenaded us. Very fun!
Dane wanted to blow out the candles on top of the Santa Lucia girl's head.
The Ikea cafeteria was all decorated for Christmas, too.
Exhibit D: We heard about a neighborhood maybe 10 minutes away from us that is HUGE into Christmas lights. On Sunday in the evening we drove down there to see all the lights--and it was fantastic! The homes were huge and amazing and probably 3/4 of the houses had these fantastic light displays. We were driving around the neighborhood for 45 minutes and didn't even see it all. I took a lot more pictures of all the lights, but I don't have them on the computer yet. Dane loved the many Santas and reindeer and crazy blinking light displays we kept seeing. But it all paled in comparison when we drove past one house that had a Thomas the train blow-up in front of it. Dane almost had a CONNIPTION in the back of the car so we had to stop and get out so he could take a picture with Thomas. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?
Giving Thomas a hug.
Verdict: Totally worth it. We were contained in our car, we popped some popcorn to bring with us, and we saw some awesome fun Christmas lights and houses. Perfect!
Exhibit E: Today I took Dane down to a mall in Dallas that has this big, huge Christmas train exhibit for kids to come look at. I knew it would be a stretch for Dane to be all that interested in it, but I know how much he loves trains and I wanted to see if it was really worth going again (next year). Plus, the money all goes to the Ronald McDonald House, which you can't argue with, right? We got there and I took a bunch of pictures of the back of Dane's head while he looked at the trains driving around.
He LOVED seeing the trains but was very disappointed that he couldn't actually play with them--he's used to the wooden train set at Barnes and Noble that he can move around himself. Seriously, he probably would have been happier there. And he HATED the other kids that were there (you can't tell from these pictures, but it was super crowded) and kept pushing and shoving any time another kid got in arm's reach. Stupid kids! How dare they try to look at the trains?
Verdict: Worth it, even with driving half-hour each way and the frustration of having Dane try to beat up every kid he saw. I am always so sad when he acts all aggressive with kids, because it really happens so rarely and when he does I don't know how to react or help him. But I decided I wasn't going to let my frustration ruin the outing (which happens a lot), and kept my cool and we stayed for a good hour watching the trains together.
Extra credit: Not really Christmas related, but the trains thing was at a mall only a few miles away from the temple, and we've been saying for months we wanted to take Dane to see the temple sometime. It just doesn't seem worth a half-hour drive to just take him and walk around the grounds and have him get tired of it after 12 minutes, though. Since I was close, we stopped by, and they had a cute little Nativity in front of it, which we looked at for about 25 seconds. Then we walked around the temple grounds until he fell and scraped his forehead on the sidewalk. And I tried to sing "I love to see the temple" to him while he yelled at me to stop. It was a super spiritual visit.
I really love these two pictures of me and my boy. What a cutie!
Verdict: Totally worth it, but mostly because I was already down there and didn't drive the hour total to get there for just this.
All in all--looks like the "worth it"s win on this one. 5/6 mostly positive experiences isn't bad! If the other option is to always stay home and do nothing ever, I think it's worth suffering every once in a while to have the possibility of doing something fun.
Bonus: Even with all of these Christmas events, we went above and beyond did some Christmas decorating at our house after moving in! Look at us sentimentally decorating our beautiful tree! Hahaha. It looks so pathetic in its little corner by itself . . . Luckily Dane doesn't care and it only took about 15 minutes to set up and decorate with our 8 Christmas tree ornaments that we have. Win-win.
But hey, we did pull out a Santa ornament and I said, "Dane, who's that?!" and he said, "Jesus!" And his second guess was, "Nephi!" I guess we're doing a good job of keeping him focused on what Christmas is really about if he thinks Santa is baby Jesus.
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