Christmas. What a heck of a lot of pressure I put myself under every year. It has to be "perfect". The kind of perfect that Martha Stewart and Norman Rockwell would create if they had produced a holiday. This is whole-heartedly my doing. I do this to myself. No one calls me on Thanksgiving night and says "Now get busy making every weekend memorable. Pack your free time with cookie-making, decorating, kid crafts, and most of all, [drumroll]… MEMORIES YOUR CHILDREN WILL TREASURE FOREVER.
So, we have been on a crazy roller-coaster of Christmas joyfulness of my own making, resulting in this morning's cookie debacle. Yes, I know that there are pre-made sugar cookies that I could have sliced or placed and baked. Santa wouldn't know the difference. Having been raised on black and white Hollywood visions of holiday perfection however, this simply wouldn't do. Don we now our 50's style aprons, fa-la-la, la, la, la, LA, LA, LA.
Stand mixer at the ready, ingredients for a double batch of sugar cookies ready to roll, I have eggs, sugar and butter whizzing festively 'round the bowl when I say to my elf-y helper "Now we need two whole eggs…" (Notice my wording…Do you see what's coming?) With a groan heard at least two streets up, I watched as my four year old threw two WHOLE (i.e. in the shell) eggs into the bowl, right into the maw of the KitchenAid.
CRACK, slop, crunchety-OH NO!
Round two went slightly more smoothly until Little One got into the mix, pinching up the dough every time I turned my back and gobbling sugar and raw eggs and butter in a ratio that fast out-paced her body weight.
This is where perfect came in and bit me. The memories my children will have of this particular Christmas Eve morning, should they not repress them fully, are of Mommy sobbing hysterically; egg shells and butter on two cabinet doors; a few Santa cookies with bizarre two year old fingernail tracks across the abdomen, looking something like a holiday attack by Wolverine, and finally, if I'm lucky, they'll remember that we did start a second batch and we did spend the morning baking together and we did sing Christmas carols before and after the crying jag.
Time always renders our memories more bright and shiny…right?
Merry Christmas my friends. Happy Holidays. Best wishes for a bright and healthy, happy and certainly imperfect New Year.
XO
