In any other year, this would have been the week of pure chaos. Between last minute baking and wrapping and travelling, there would have been very little time for stopping and just ... being.
Funny how COVID has taken so much from us, but has given us that. We've had plenty of opportunities to just be in 2020.
Having time to just be has led to a few "interesting" side effects. For one, it turns out that my time management skills, which generally peak at this time of year, completely fell apart. I have been AWFUL at being productive. No worries, though, I have no regrets. Mostly I'm just impressed with how effective I normally am at cramming a whole lot of life into just a few days when I need to. I can go back to doing that in 2021. For now? I have no regrets that I finished wrapping presents about three seconds before it was time for the girls to open them.
And that's the other side effect. Normally we travel Christmas week, so the girls open their gifts early. Then they have a second wave with one set of grandparents and then a third wave with another and eventually we head home and they find that Santa stopped by. Without travel breaking that all up and forcing things to spread across an entire week, the girls had to wait later than ever to open gifts.
And OMG was it a form of torture for them. I reminded them about 3294670394 times that I had every right to make them wait until Christmas Day, but there was no way that I actually could because Mila would have destroyed me.
She asked if it was time to open yet SO many times. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. She woke up at 4:00 am earlier this week to ask me, and then again at 2:00 am the next night. She asked while I was in the shower. She barged into meetings (since we didn't travel, I worked) and asked, "Can we open presents now?" She asked when we were driving around looking at Christmas lights, she asked while eating breakfast, she asked and she asked and she asked.
Each time she asked, it was with genuine hope and anticipation and pounds of joy. I didn't know such a tiny person could hold so much joy, but there it was, wide-eyed and smiling.
That's why I didn't run away. Despite the fact that the child was doing everything she could to drive me to the brink, she was so freakin' cute while doing it that I decided to stick around.
It's a good thing, too, because both girls positively exploded with joy as they opened their gifts. They are always ecstatic about the smallest of things and this year was no exception. Mila, at this very moment, is dreaming of what Santa will bring while surrounded by a miniature army of new stuffed friends.
Christmas Day is going to be a very good day to just be.