Recovering from the Holidays
January 5, 2012 2:09 am
I’m feeling a bit of post-holiday hangover. Not the type of hangover you may have experienced in college, but rather the kind of hangover that happens when you look around and find yourself asking “Now what?”
The holidays can be filled with parties, gatherings, travel, fun, gifts and indulgent foods. But in the days that follow, families often begin to feel the effects that all those changes from the norm bring: bedtimes and nap times get pushed around; well meaning family members feed all types of decadent, sweet treats to your little ones; excitement builds and then crashes. When all the fun ends, mom and dad are left to clean up the messes, both literal and emotional.
This first week of January is always a tough one at our house. We try to find our way back to the normal routines and schedules. My kids often ask multiple times a day, “where’s dad?” only to be reminded the adult world has a much shorter break than most schools. We spend this week trying to slowly work our way back to normal meal, bed and wake times. It’s my hope that when school and work resume, it’s not as harsh on the littlest members of our clan.
Each day we try to add one more piece of our routine back into the mix, while still trying to incorporate fun into our final days of vacation. For instance, if everyone gets dressed by our normal routine time, the reward is a trip to the local children’s museum that day. This helps our family get out of our pajamas and back into normal life while still enjoying our days off.
How does your family deal with the transition from the holiday season back to a normal schedule? Do you have any tips that you’ve learned along the way to make it easier? Share with us!
About the Author
Heather is mom to four, born within 40 months (single, twins, single). She writes transparently about her chaotic household to encourage others through the twists and turns of parenting.
Comments
4 Comments
What can we do when we have many boring free time? How about try to get access to the online games? When we talk about the game, we need to talk about the WOW Gold. As the WOW is the world’s most famous online game,all of us knows that we have to get the cheap swtor credits to save money !
I just talked about the same thing on my blog today. Getting back into a groove is tough! Especially since my 1 year old is going through a massive growth spurt.
http://www.preparingforpeanut.com
My husband was off for a while after Christmas, so it helped to have 2 of us wrangling the 3 year old. He went back to work on Tuesday, but then worked from home yesterday, so it was a help to have a mini break in the week before riding it out to the weekend! On Tuesday my 3yo didn’t want to take off her pajamas but she REALLY needed a bath, so she picked out different pjs, got her bath and back into pjs– since we weren’t going anywhere, it didn’t matter. I got what I wanted– her clean, and she just wore her pjs to bed and we got dressed yesterday morning with no issues!
I had a new baby a week ago. It’s comforting to me that the attitude and and schedule issues my 3 year old is going through may also be holiday related and not simply jealousy toward her new baby sister.