It’s true! This Christmas morning had me in tears and panic! How in the world did I let life become so sideways that I forgot my own sweet baby girl at Christmas? I would like to use the “Mom of 4 card” here but I don’t think I can pull that off. Don’t judge or ridicule me… Trust me; I did that enough on Christmas morning.
I was convinced that I was hands down the worst mom ever.
Let me backtrack a little. We had asked the kids multiple times to sit down and create a list with us. Finally, Matt (my husband) had them gather around some toy catalogs and Amazon so they could get some ideas.
I did all of my shopping online this year.
Almost all of it was done on Amazon. Matt had also purchased a few things from brick and mortar stores. One evening I was online shopping and filling my cart, but got called away for some motherly duty and never actually finished shopping or the transaction. The cart was filled with items for my kids as well as cousins and friends. My husband, in an attempt to help me check things off the list let me know that he went ahead and purchased everything in the cart.
Life got busy and packages rolled in by the truck load.
We not only had packages that we had ordered but also some from aunts, uncles and grandparents. Most of the boxes were piled in a corner until we had a moment to secretly open them and check out the contents.
Moving forward to Christmas Eve night…
All the gifts were wrapped and we were up late assembling a couple of things from Santa. I let the older kids put all of the gifts under the tree before they went to bed (we can’t do that until Christmas Eve night when the 20 month old destroyer is in bed). And then after the older ones were in bed, I slid the Santa gifts out to the tree.
Christmas morning arrived.
We had 3 hours sleep because the baby was up for 3 hours!!! No idea where that came from, but we were toast when the kids all woke up. The 8 year old had gotten up at 3 AM and I had to firmly, with a smiling grimace, threaten him to stay in bed until he saw the sun rise.
The kids went for Santa’s items first. My daughter (6) had a little baby doll set with crib, sink and high chair. And there was one box with a dress in it from Santa… but the boys all had 3 gifts to open from Santa and she just had the one. She noticed and was a little upset as she pointed it out.
This was where panic set in. It suddenly struck me that I may have made a massive failure as I quickly tried to recall what I had purchased. Yes. It was true. I forgot my daughter on Christmas!
A big part of my problem was that I had delegated my wrapping to my babysitter. In doing so, I never properly did inventory.
This was my one big mistake.
I rummaged through the gifts under the tree and the nightmare was true. That was all we had gotten! There was nothing from Mom and dad and Santa had shorted her.
I was crushed. I felt sick. Tears rolled down my face though I tried to hide them. In an attempt to salvage my disaster, I changed the tag on a gift from a cousin to say it was from Santa. “Oh look! Here is one that we missed from Santa.”
The morning went on and my sweet girl was just a joy. She smiled at me and said it was the best Christmas ever. She truly did have plenty. Many of the items she had wished for I had Grandma and family purchase for her. It wasn’t the end of the world as much as the sleep deprived, hungry, stressed mama had believed it to be.
I wasn’t satisfied though.
I left the house at 9:00 AM and headed to Walgreens. God bless that store for saving my Christmas. I bought a baby doll and wrapped a tag around her neck with a message that said “now you didn’t think I would forget the baby doll now did you? Love, Santa.” And when I got home I shoved it inside of the Christmas tree as the kids ate breakfast. It looked as if Santa had hidden it there all along. Then my husband “spied” it and brought it to my daughter’s attention. She giggled with laughter at Santa’s silliness.
I also was able to get a Doc McStuffins Kit which I also thought I had added to my cart weeks ago from Amazon. It was wrapped and hidden as I expressed confusion over a gift that I knew dad and I had purchased but had not seen her open. She was sent on a hunt to figure out where we had over looked it.
I shared this story with my mom and she believed surely there was a lesson to be learned here.
I am sure there are a few.
- Always inventory your Christmas Gifts BEFORE Christmas Day
- Don’t be a last minute shopper!
- I am a great mom. I just made a dumb mistake. I won’t let negative self-doubt get the best of me!
- God is Faithful even when we fail.
- My daughter is kind, grateful and fills my heart. She melted me when she proclaimed this the best Christmas ever- even before I had made my attempt to fix things.
Thanks for reading all the way through. From one mom who is still trying to figure it all out to another- God Bless you! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!!
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