Twelve days of Christmas

So it’s arrived again, the time when the decorations come down, the kids go back to school and life goes back to what resembles normality in this house.  And I can’t help but feel a little sad. The anticlimax has hit.  2015 looms full of opportunity, but full of the same old same old… There are going to be lots of challenges that will need to be overcome, and I will face them with both excitement and trepidation. 

How to combat a certain element of the fear of failure is a challenge that I will have to learn, and to teach my boys.  How to look at a grey sky and see a blue one will at times be a challenge.  How to find that last ounce of strength to help a child with his homework when I am tired, or overworked or over wrought will be a challenge.

But it will happen.  And it will be my little family that will spur me on in any dark days that I have. The little pleading eyes that say Please can we use the last Egg to make some Cupcakes? And the smell of baking will ease anything!  Or the little shoulders that shrug when presenting me with the requirements for a fancy dress costume due in school the next day – with total trust that I can do it.  And I do.  Or the fiercely wagging tail of the dog which indicates that Yes, he knows it is raining, but still, it would be fun to go and splash in puddles and get all muddy.  And it is.

And so it’s not really so bad, the last few days of Christmas.  It signifies that we have survived another festive period, this year mercifully without any mishaps. It gives me time to look again through the cards, reading those little scribbles that tell you what others lives have been like, looking at the enclosed photos of their growing kids or aging parents. It gives me a chance to carefully wrap up all the dough decorations and baubles that the kids made in nursery, preserving them for another year.  And it is a time for reflection.

And if anyone needs  anything to look forward to - it will be less than 350 days before they all go up again!