Dirt: Again with the routine?

As I have progressed through the stages of motherhood, I have realized two things. 

#1 A routine will save your life.

#2 Routines do not mean you are boring (at least that is what I tell myself.)

routine does not = these

My first daughter was an easy baby, except she never slept through the night. She nursed through the night. I was exhausted, but happy because she really didn't need a routine. I could go all day long and she would nap here and there and we were cool. We traveled across the country when she was 5 months old, first by plane, then by car. I never wanted to commit to a routine because I felt that as a new person in town and a new mom, I really needed flexibility to just live my life. And, if I am honest, I equated a routine as such a "mom thing" and while I had a child, I did not want to be labeled a mom. By 13 months I was pregnant again and we moved into "Mommy needs a routine...because Mommy  needs a nap" mode.

Whatever: Decorating for the holidaze

Well, I have begun giving into the peer pressure.

Yep, slowly, ever so slowly...

I am decorating for Christmas.

My next door neighbor is the holiday guru.

All holidays are celebrated with gusto, but Christmas is her wheelhouse.

The new girl two doors down had her tree up before Thanksgiving and a wreath on every door and window before the Black Friday sales were over.

 I don't really know her, but she seems a little overachieverish.

One of my best girlfriends has a tradition of decorating the tree on Thanksgiving eve so her family can enjoy it at dinner. That is actually a nice sentiment.

They are all hardcore.

 I envy their excitement and endurance. I was like that for awhile, when my kids were little and even before that, when it was just Steve and I.  We traveled more for holidays then and had an artificial tree that would not die on us. Plus, I was younger.

 (Lame excuse as two of the three mentioned above are either the same age or older than me.)

Now, though, I want to savor every holiday and suck the symbolic marrow out of my holidays. 

I want to horde my Halloween candy.  I want to bask in the glow of  Thanksgiving gluttony  before I move onto the peace and joy of Christmas.  I am reluctant to jump from one holiday to the next, but it could also be the coma I am just now coming out of after eating 4 pieces of pie in one seating the day after Thanksgiving...just a thought.

But the pressure is on. So, Tuesday,  I hung a wreath on my back door. 

Yesterday, I pulled the decorations out of the attic and put up my special vintage white tree.

AND worked on putting up another wreath. 

 

Ever so slowly my drab and boring house is turning into the tacky holiday experience that we I love.

It's beginning to look a little like Christmas!