'Tis the Season...

a) for ridiculous baking frenzies,
b) for overhyped and overstimulated children,
c) for unrealistic expectations regarding decorating/present buying/card writing,
d) for diplomatic entreaties worthy of Madeleine Albright between family members,
or e) All of the above.

If you picked e), welcome on board! Yes, it is the time of year for all of the above. Oh goody.

Lemme see, in the past 24 hours we have, yes, you guessed it, All of the Above!

First, I have just spent the better part of four hours solid baking away in the kitchen for the goodwill gesture d'anné for the neighborhood. Why? Well, because, that's why! I feel like Alton Brown here...I just wanted to do it, okay? And frankly it seemed like it was necessary since so many of them couldn't make our party last weekend, especially since those not present included the families who take our trash the 1/2 mile to the main road every week, TYVM. I bake them stuff throughout the year but since it's Christmastime it seems to call for pulling out all the stops and giving them lots of baked goodness for the kids to go into sugar induced comas enjoy since they take the cans most of the time. And after gifting all those families with copious quantities of baked goods it would just seem wrong to leave out their neighbors, and thus you have me planning goody plates for the whole neighborhood. Ahem.

And, speaking of hyped up children, I think DD is already oversaturated with all the talk of the family members who are coming to visit next week. She is sort of blasé about it now, and discussions today with my brother and his family did not produce the ecstatic squeals of delight that would normally accompany the declaration that her cousins are coming to visit. Her attitude was, "oh, that's cool," and off she went to do some imaginary doctoring of her baby doll. Hmm. I think we are overselling it to her, the neatness of having people come for Christmas. Of course the endless varieties and amounts of sugar around the house and more generally (if not always specifically) available has led to a focus on, can I reach the advent calendar now while no one is looking as opposed to asking endlessly when her grandparents or cousins will arrive (like she did last year). Chocolate advent calendars are evil, I am telling you.

Ah yes, those family members who are coming to visit...did I mention that includes a set of very spendy (read: spoiling) grandparents and a set of very non-spendy and non-spoiling parents? Yes, and who should be caught in the middle, but moi. As middle-of-the-road parents, we let the grandparents spoil to a fairly liberal degree and put our foot down on non-negotiable (i.e. dangerous) items. Brother and SIL, however, chose the course of putting their foot down over extremely stupid and silly things, and thus have invited the current situation to a certain degree...the current situation being, my mom looks at their designated wishlists for their kids, decides what she wants to buy, and then adds on to it at her choosing based on what SHE thinks their kids will enjoy instead of what Brother and SIL say they want the kids to have and that their kids will enjoy.

The latest round which has us impersonating Switzerland involves a certain ride-on vehicle for Niece #2, who is 4. DD is getting a ride-on vehicle from the grandparents for Christmas, and in the interest of fairness and to avoid the green-eyed monster my mom decided to go against what Brother and SIL had said and order one for Niece #2. Now, to be fair to Mom & Dad, Brother & SIL do not have a good track record of predicting what their kids will like. Niece #1 wanted an American Girl doll for Christmas last year, and my parents bought one for her despite the constant moans from Brother & SIL that she would "never play with it" and "she hates dolls". Well, you can guess the outcome, can't you--Niece #1 still plays with her doll, absolutely adores it, and takes it to "teas" with her friends who also have American Girl dolls. This is just the latest example of this poor predictive ability of Brother & SIL, so it came as no surprise to us when Mom & Dad ordered the ride-on vehicle for Niece #2.

However, from the way Brother & SIL reacted today when we pre-emptively warned them about it on the phone, you'd think that my parents had bought a miniature coal power plant for the girl to increase her carbon footprint, complete with an integrated Krispy Kreme doughnut machine to turn her into a couch potato. "What's wrong with people power!??" "We told them we don't want our kids using things to get around, we want them to use their own feet!" Uh, calm down, campers, ho-kay? It's not a big deal...she accepts it graciously, you can't take it home because "It won't fit in our car," and we say we'll bring it the next time we visit you...which probably won't be for a good while, by which point you can say she outgrew it and that's that. No biggie. But Brother whined about how much they spent, SIL said she wants us to serve my parents Mexican food the whole time they are here because it will make her happy (because they don't like Mexican food). The whole time DH & I were looking at each other and rolling our eyes. I wanted to scream, "GROW UP!!" but refrained. Instead we counseled them to remember that grandparents are supposed to buy things that parents won't buy, and it's their job to spoil their grandchildren, and that the way my mom expresses her love is to give lavish gifts. It's not an attack on their low consumption, granola lifestyle.

I can hardly wait to see how many fires we get to put out when everyone is under our roof for 4 nights. Oh yeah, THIS will be fun. Especially when I bring out the birthday cake for Jesus at Christmas dinner. That's going to be popular with my brother. Well, you know what...I don't care. It IS the birthday of Jesus that's ostensibly being celebrated, and in my house, it most definitely IS the birthday of Jesus that we celebrate. The whole Santa thing is not played up here, but we do emphasize the birth of Christ. So, I guess we will not be Switzerland when it comes to the reason for our celebration, and that's okay. I just hope we've bought enough wine for everyone to be a bit mellow by the time the cake is being cut!