I must confess that while my son was growing up, I did not do all of the many holiday activities that I might have dreamed of doing before I had children. I did a lot of things with him, especially if I could find another mother who wanted to do the same thing. I did decorating and cookie baking and other fun things. But, there were a lot of things that I never actually got around to doing.
One of those things was making a gingerbread house. I eyed the kits. I made gingerbread as practice. I had ingredients on hand with the idea that we would do this gingerbread house thing. It would become a tradition. But, several times we moved across the world over Christmas. Living in a hotel or even at Grandma's didn't really make the ideal setting for that tradition. Other times, it seemed like too much work or time just ran out. I always wanted to make an elaborate and beautiful gingerbread house.
Now I am Grandma and I have more time. I do less laundry and less cooking and cleaning than I did in those childrearing years. (I probably should do more cleaning.) But, I won't be moving at Christmas either. I can borrow my grandson and return him when we are done. It won't always be that way, someday when he is a little older, he won't want to spend time with Grandma. These days are precious and fleeting.
He is only two and a half, so my expectations are set appropriately down to minimal. The point is have fun and do a "project" as my grandson likes to say. On Tuesday, when I had just the grandson at my house, we made gingerbread houses. Well, they weren't really gingerbread, they were graham crackers. The gable part of the house let the breeze blow through. But, with icing and graham crackers we made simple little houses. My grandson mostly ate the icing and asked for more. But, the cutest part of the activity was that he made up a song to the tune of Jingle Bell Rock--Gingerbread, gingerbread, gingerbread house and the words repeat from there.
No comments:
Post a Comment