I love holidays. For me, holidays (including my birthday) always bring up such a feeling of excitement. Holidays were always filled with family time, laughter, great food, fun card games, and the ever-popular mixed tape. And with each passing holiday always brought about the sadness that it was over and that it would be another 365 days until it was upon us again.
If you were anything like I was growing up, that 365 days would take a million years, give or take a couple hundred. Whereas the actual holiday was over in five seconds! But as I’ve grown up, the 365 days that it would normally take to circle back to a holiday is now done in a matter of months….unless you are my daughter Audrey.
I had always wondered when I have children, would they embrace the holidays with the same excitement and fervor that my brothers and I had? Or would they look at it as just another day off. Of course at first, Audrey could care less! She was more focused on getting her next meal or sticking her foot in her mouth than the strand of Christmas lights I had artistically thrown around her, dying Easter eggs, or picking out a pumpkin for Halloween. But slowly the excitement for each holiday and the fun activities they brought about started to sink in.
If your children are anything like Audrey, once they lock onto something there is no shaking it. For at least the past two years, when Audrey gets wind of a fun activity or holiday that is literally ALL she can talk about until the time in question has happened and THEN she’s immediately onto the next. Every day she asks ‘when’ or ‘how long’ until something happens. I started out by telling her ‘X amount of days’ but I noticed that she didn’t quite have that time frame down in understanding.
So I decided to switch it to ‘sleeps’.
Now she asks ‘how many sleeps until’. Using this measure of time seems to really work and I think it’s a cute idea. It helps her to fall asleep quicker knowing that when she wakes up, she is one sleep closer to the fun. It helps to give her a very firm reference of time because she can see the sun go down and she physically has to get ready for bed. And I don’t just use it for holiday fun, but normal daily activities as well, like her dance class and birthday parties.
Now that Audrey has become more excited about holidays and other fun activities, it lights a new fire in me. I look forward to the decorating, the planning of Halloween costumes and the dying of Easter eggs because these are new memories we are creating together. And I hope that one day when she has children, they too ask “how many sleeps until:…
