Holiday Traditions With Kids: Ask-Us-Anything Minisode #4

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Shanna

Hi, welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shanna and Laura. This is another Ask Us Anything mini-soad holiday edition where we answer listener questions about holiday traditions and springtime with family at the holidays. Let's get started.

Hey, Laura. Ho, ho, ho. Wait a minute. Is that Santa on the other end? How did you know? Shh. Don't tell Augie. The jolly ho, ho, ho in your voice. All right. I won't tell. I promise. But you're going to tell all your secrets on this episode. Spilling the beans. spill in the marshmallows. All right, so let's dive right in. We've got some listener questions about the holidays. We actually got a lot of listener questions about this, so I'm very excited to dig in here. So multiple people have asked us about holiday traditions. What do we do with our families for holiday traditions? Do we do things like Santa, Elf on the Shelf, other stuff? Laura, tell us, what do you guys do for the holidays? Okay, so we...

Laura

It's a preface. We are like a religious. We don't really like, I don't know if I'd call us atheists, agnostic. We just don't really follow. We just don't have any like religious holiday tradition. We just sort of have like a general secular American holiday tradition. Same, same. because it's america that defaults to christmas so we generally just celebrate christmas and all the sort of secularized americanized stuff that comes with it so one of our traditions is that we always get like a real christmas tree a fresh one because. Cory is like your super easygoing guy, right? I think you've known him for like 15 years almost now, I think. And I think that's fair. Call him easygoing, right? Yes, yes, definitely. When it comes to Christmas trees, he is not. Really interesting. Well, it's not like he's difficult, but he has opinions, like very strong opinions.

And I've now been roped into them. I now know what he likes. No Douglas fir, I bet. Oh, no, he's okay with the Douglas fir. Really? None of the other niche ones. I feel like Douglas Four is very traditional, right? No, no. He wants the most stereotypically traditional tree you can imagine. It needs to be a perfect shape. It needs to be just the right height, the perfect shape. It has to be conical, it has to be full, but not too full. We go through a selection process, which the almost four-year-old and almost two-year-old Did they have the patience for it this year? Questionable. Where do you go to buy it? Oh yeah, we go to this like very niche, very specialized tree lot. You know, obviously we would prefer to go out into the woods and cut it down ourselves, but in lieu of that, we have to find like the highest quality tree we can find. So we always go to this place.

It's called, let me see if I'm getting this right, Home Depot?

Oh, that's so niche. I don't know. It might be home to pot. Look, we've tried a bunch of like tree lots and they're always really expensive and like the selection isn't as good and Home Depot, at least the ones around us, like they have legit trees there. Like they've got good choices. So we've had really good luck the last few years at Home Depot. So we actually went this year. We got the tree and I felt very proud. of myself because we look through all the trees that had already been like cut open and fluffed out, you know, if they're a little like netting. Yeah. And none of them were right. And I agreed with Corey, like none of them, there were like weird bald spots, like it was just no good. And so we started looking into the ones that were not cut open yet. And like the Home Depot guy gave us a scissors, it was fine. So we're like trying to pick one out and I just saw one.

I was like Corey that one and it was like behind a bunch of other ones. I mean it was not convenient to get to I was like this one's calling my name. He's like really? I was like I don't know what it is. It's got a different color green. It looks perfectly symmetrical and he's like all right. All right. I trust you. And so he like pulled out. He had to pull out like five trees to get back to this one. But I'll tell you Shanna this thing was perfect. Yeah. Shall I send you a picture? Yeah. Okay, I'm sending you like a glamour shot, a wide shot of the perfect tree before decoration.

Shanna

Ooh, that's a shapely tree. Very nice. It's got the perfect little stick at the top for a star. Very nice.

Laura

Yeah. So we got that. And then we decorate the tree. That's always fun. the kids get to join in. Of course, the ornaments are haphazardly placed when you have two youngins putting them up. And that's very hard for Cory.

Shanna

Oh, yeah, it's very bottom heavy. Yeah.

Laura

Yeah. Corey. Well, actually in our house, it's kind of the opposite because Sebastian likes to take them off the tree. So there's like a bald spot on the bottom. And Corey has to really restrain himself from like micromanaging where they put up the ornaments. You just reorganize later in the evening when they go to bed. Correct. That is key. And then every night because Sebastian takes it all off.

Shanna

I love that you guys do the fresh tree. We don't do a fresh tree anymore. A couple of years ago, we got a tree from an actual fancy expensive lot. But we decorate so early, like the day after Thanksgiving, we want to decorate. And we got this tree and three weeks later, it was dead, I mean, brown. And I'm just like, Man, I'm so tired of having dead brown trees by the time Christmas comes. And I was so angry about it that year that we took all the decorations off the tree. We pitched that tree in the trash and went and bought another tree from Home Depot, a cheap one, that like lasted us through Christmas. And I'm just like, I don't know. I don't think we're going to do this anymore. So the next year we got a fake tree that's like pre-lit. And that's our jam. We actually love it. I love it.

I miss the smell of fresh pine, but you know, you can get little pieces from the Christmas tree lot and make a little wreath or whatever. But yes, decorating is a huge thing in our house. Like we put on the Christmas music, put on the fire. We have like Santa hats and funny glasses for the holidays and all this stuff. And it's just like kick off the holiday season with that big decorating party is what I call it.

Laura

Oh, so fun. I love it. I will say that one of my traditions too is my annual fussy setting up of my very nerdy siphon system to keep the tree watered.

Yeah, tell us about your siphon system. So I figured this out, I don't know, eight years ago, something like that. Basically, you're just creating like a siphon where you have like a bucket of water outside the tree. And then you have a tube that's filled with water so that it's like completely airtight that goes into the base of the tree and it's a simple siphon. So as the tree sucks water up, water goes from the bucket outside the tree into the tree well. And you have like continuous watering of the tree as needed. But then you have a bucket under your tree. Well then you take a cardboard box and you wrap it to look like a present and you put it on top of the bucket so it just looks like another present and then you pick up the box it has like a bottomless box right. And then you refill the bucket but you only have to refill the bucket you know once a week if that.

So yeah, I'm a big fan of the siphoning system that's so smart I just googled it yeah there's like YouTube tutorials but and this year I'm so proud of myself it worked on the first try.

Shanna

That's awesome do you feel nervous about having a big bucket of water like out with kids and cats and everything.

Laura

My cats don't seem to care. It's not a big bucket either. I use like a little one gallon bucket.

Shanna

Oh, okay.

Laura

Or maybe two gallon maybe. It's yeah, it's a smaller bucket. So yeah, I think if it was a big, you know, the toddler's gonna trip headfirst into it and drown thing, I'd be more concerned. But especially because it's like under a box, keeps it away from the kids and stuff. So yeah.

Shanna

Cool. Well, what about the Santa, elf on the shelf, all that stuff? How do you handle that?

Laura

So we're doing like, Just sort of you absorb the culture around you and so Santa's a thing thing like we never really sat down or like do we believe in Santa? How are we going to handle it? Like Cory and I just started saying things a couple years ago like when Augie was a baby like Santa's gonna bring you toys and like that was it, right? The decision made. Exactly and we do try to keep the Santa toys like less high value because you know I read a thing a few years back about like how Santosh and bringing iPads to kids because kids and families who can't afford an iPad are like well how come Santa brought Jimmy and iPad and me like a candy bar you know like yeah what why is Santa discriminating against us. So we try to keep the Santa gifts fairly modest, but I've already been telling Augie that like, oh, Santa's gonna fill up your stocking the night before Christmas.

And he's all excited about that. He's like, Santa's gonna come in. So we lie to them to their face about that. Oh yeah, same, same. And honestly, I don't even understand Elf on the shelf. It wasn't a thing in my family. It wasn't a thing growing up. I literally don't understand. I don't get it. Can you explain it to me?

Shanna

I can explain it to you based on what I've gathered from seeing posts on the internet about it. I don't do it. I actually made a choice not to do it. If the girls like beg me one year to do it, I will probably give in. But it's this little toy elf that you put around your house. Like every night you like hide it in a different spot or in some creative setup. for the kids to find it in the morning. And I think the idea is that the elf is there to spy on the kids all through December to make sure they have good behavior to report back to Santa. Like that's the general gist of it, but the fun part is that the kids discover its new location every day and people get really creative and put the elf making mischief, I don't know, with toilet paper rolls or something like that. I mean people get really really creative with it and some people really love it.

To me it felt like a lot of extra work and mental load that I did not want to take on so I was like that's not happening but it does seem like a really fun creative outlet for people who are super into it.

Laura

would love waking up and finding the elf in a different place. But heck yeah. I'm not huge on the surveillance aspect. Like we haven't introduced the like naughty or nice or like beyond good behavior or Santa won't bring your like we haven't done any of that. I don't know if you you know it just didn't seem in line with Rai parenting.

Shanna

Oh yeah no we never mentioned that but you know there's like songs and stuff about it like naughty or nice so they get it but it's I never impress it on them.

Laura

Yeah, yeah. Oh, and one other fun thing that has been introduced this year by my mom is she got a little advent calendar for my boys. It's like the Ikea one and it has little chocolates in it every day. And oh my gosh, Augie is obsessed every morning. since December 1st. She's like, can I do the calendar with the doors? Can I do the candy? It's just like obsessed with it. So I think we're going to make that a tradition. I didn't grow up with advent calendars. Like I honestly didn't know what they were until like five years ago.

Shanna

Oh, that's so interesting. I did. And I think it's because my aunt and uncle who lived in Germany would send them to us. If I'm remembering this correctly, like I have a vague recollection of like, it was a thing in Germany and they would send it to us and we would do them. We get the ones from Trader Joe's and same, our girls have been so excited every morning to open the door and eat chocolate. CECE calls it the candy calendar. Can I help? I got it to the candy calendar. Candy calendar. So that's yeah, that's a fun thing in our house too.

Laura

Yeah, I've personally wanted some like I saw one that was like a fabric like every day you get a different fabric and like I don't need it. I'm not sewing anything right now, but I'm like man, I love that little gift every day.

Shanna

Ah, it's so fun. And it's a fun way to build up the anticipation for Christmas, a little fun thing.

Laura

And to like teach numbers too, you know, because they're all scattered about. So Augie has to like hunt for the number every morning.

Shanna

Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's educational candy.

Laura

Yes, exactly. And you know, the other thing I'm realizing is that, you know, I'm like, I haven't heard of this stuff. Like, I don't understand this stuff. I forgot to mention that like maybe some of my like blind spots are because my dad was Jewish. Oh, yeah, right. But he didn't like practice Judaism. He wasn't religious. There's all kinds of reasons. I mean, number one being that he grew up in a communist country where Judaism like wasn't really allowed. Like you couldn't go to synagogue. His synagogue was closed. So he didn't grow up with any religious traditions. And so he didn't really like know how to, you know, he doesn't know what to do for Passover. Like he can't do a Seder, that sort of thing. So for like, we would, we would acknowledge Hanukkah when I was growing up. Like we'd be like, oh, it's the first night of Hanukkah, but I wouldn't like get presents on Hanukkah.

Like I go over to like other friends' houses and play with their dreidel and stuff like that. But, but I do think that that sort of is part of the reason I'm like, what the fuck is an elf on a shelf? Like what's an advent calendar? You know, because like I, I definitely, because, you know, my backgrounds are just a little bit different than sort of sort of an average quote unquote American household, I guess.

Shanna

Yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, another thing that we do, which is kind of fun, is I have been getting the girls like new Christmas pajamas every year. Like that's a tradition. For the first few years, it was matching jammies because they were both in like, you know, one tee and four tee. And so it's easy to just buy things that are matching. So they'd always have little matching pajamas that they would wear during the holiday season and on Christmas morning. It's a little harder now because L's in like the girls section and CECE's in the toddler section. So they're not matching, but they both have their Christmas jammies already for this year and they love them. It's like the number one outfit they want to wear all the time around the house. And just another little fun thing to do throughout the month to kind of, you know, stretch out the celebration.

Laura

I need to do that. I've done that in past years, but I don't have to that fit them right now. So yeah, I got to do that.

Shanna

Yeah, it's so cute to see them in the little jammies. So that's fun. Anyway, we have another question from a listener about spending time with family at the holidays. Shall we take a break and come back with that? I think we should.

Laura

Okay, we are back and we have a question from Janelle that is a juicy, juicy question. It's a topic that can get very heated, I think, and very treacherous around the holidays. And that is, how do you split time with family at the holidays? And Janelle says, she's a new mom struggling with this. And it's, yeah, how? Shanna, what have you done in the past?

Shanna

We have combined holidays with family. And I am very lucky because Steve's family and my family get along really well. They don't live too far from us. When Elle was a baby, his mom was up in Seattle. So just a quick plane ride down here. My parents are in Phoenix, which is pretty close. They would drive out. And so everyone would just come here. I was pretty adamant about being like, we're the people with kids now. I would prefer for family to come to us. You know, before that, we had been splitting time. Like one year we'd go to Steve's family, one year we'd go to my family. And I just wanted to bring everyone together once I had a kid. I didn't want to travel with a baby at the holidays. And I wanted us to stay put and create the memories and traditions in our own home.

And luckily, the families have been very understanding of that and easygoing, and they want to spend the holidays with us. So my family comes out to our house. Steve's mom comes out to our house. His sister comes a few days after Christmas because she needs to be up in Minnesota actually on Christmas Day. But yeah, then we just get together and kind of all celebrate together. And we're very lucky in that regard. And I realize this answer is probably not very helpful. to people who actually need to split time. What about you, Laura? Do you split time with the families?

Laura

Well, kind of. Yes and no. So, okay, this is a tough one if you have a big family. And this has been an issue for me in the past when I felt compelled to split time between my dad. So, you know, my parents are divorced. They've been divorced since I was like, I don't know, 13 or something. And so both of my parents are with new partners and their partners have kids from their previous marriages. So like that actually balloons out into a lot of people. And it does get tricky to try to figure out. And before we had kids, it was like this constant juggle and a lot of guilt and, you know, like,

I just remember holidays like trying to decide like, we would do this thing where it was like for Thanksgiving, for example, Cory and I would come out to Fresno and we'd have to negotiate like, okay, your dad gets Thanksgiving day and my mom will do Thanksgiving the day after or whatever, like do her dinner the day after. We'd be doing two of everything. Meanwhile it all has to be coordinated with my stepbrothers dad because like they also have to do the. The like split time scheduling and once my stepbrothers had kids then it got that got really complicated yeah and then my brother gets married and so his wife lives in Minnesota so like. we have to coordinate with them. So it's a thing where I think they just decided, okay, we'll alternate which family we go to for different Christmases, right? So we'll have to know, okay, is it Erica's family year or is it our family year?

And there's a lot of figuring out. So when I had Augie, I think that year, he's a January baby, right? So he had a long time to think about it. And so that year for Thanksgiving we did go up to Fresno and we did the like I'll do it one day You'll do it the other day thing and did all the juggling and because we had just done that for Thanksgiving I think we decided to just have Christmas at home and part of the reason I think is like you said like I want to create memories for my kids in their own home I want them to have this feeling of the holidays is like they have traditions at home not like scattered to the wind right and traveling with kids is so hard and But I wasn't like super clear on that at first. I just that first Christmas it just kind of I think like Jeff and Erica were going to Minnesota and so like my mom came to us and it was not a big deal.

And also my dad had like just had surgery so he didn't want visitors and whatever. So like that solved itself. And then it was 2020. And the pandemic kind of like shut everything down. And so that Thanksgiving, we just did something small at home. Sherry came, Corey's mom, but she lives about an hour away, less than an hour away. So that's easy for her to come. And Christmas we kind of just had our own little Christmas. And it was so nice shot. I mean, there were a lot of things about the pandemic that sucked, but like one thing that really was great was like learning how To sort of be happy in your own home and reevaluate like you said and since then Corey and I were just we're over traveling for the holidays especially with two kids now it's just like it's too much so for now.

we kind of have our boundary basically which is like we're gonna have our holidays at home and everyone is welcome and we're not upset if you can or cannot come right like it's yeah you're welcome to come but we're doing our family holiday here. And so that's kind of where I'm coming from. We're not really rude about it or anything, but my mom was asking me, like, oh, do you want to travel? Do you want to do this? Do you want to do that? And I'm just like, no, I just want to be home. And I think she kind of looks at me like, you're a homebody. You need to spread out your wings and do things, but I want to be a homebody at the holidays.

Shanna

Especially around the holidays. I mean, there's plenty of time the rest of the year to travel when the airports aren't packed to the gills and the freeways are packed. There's already so much disruption in schedules with kids during the holidays and what's going on in their home with the decorations. Like there's a lot of fluctuation and change at that time of year with kids. So oftentimes they're, you know, they're just processing all of that anyway, despite all of the travel and stuff. So I don't think there's anything wrong with being a homebody around the holidays. I spent all of my holidays at home in Phoenix and I loved it. I just loved being around the Christmas tree and you know how it just like made the living room feel warm and cozy and I don't know. I love that and that's what I want to give my kids is that feeling of being home for the holidays.

Laura

Yeah. And I think I've talked about this on the show, but there's something about having your own kids like that allows you to be selfish in a way because I don't know, for me, it's hard for me to be selfish. It's hard for me to prioritize myself, right? And I'm sure someone's listening, probably my friend, Alia, she's like, it's not selfish to prioritize yourself. Stop saying that. But you know, it feels like I can't deprogram myself from that. Like I feel selfish to prioritize myself. I know it's hard. It's hard. But when you have kids, you can kind of like externalize that and be like, I'm not being selfish. I'm like protecting their traditions and protecting their comfort and all that stuff. Yeah. And so if you're having trouble with this Janelle, who originally asked us this question, like maybe thinking about it in that way.

Like, I know that feeling of everyone wanting you to come to them, everyone wanting you to like pulling you in different directions. I mean, I was so stressed out so many holidays with my divorced parents situation, like feeling like I could never be in the right place at the right time. And I'm even if your parents are divorced, like in-laws are like, right? Like your in-laws want you, but also your parents want you and also your Siblings want you and like it's so hard when you feel like you can't be in all those places at once. But if you can like focus and remember that it's about the kid now, it can help you prioritize what's important.

Shanna

Absolutely.

Laura

And maybe that is going to your in-laws across the country, right? Like maybe that is what's important, but you just have to decide that for yourself.

Shanna

Yes. And I think that remembering that the holiday season is more than about just, say, Christmas day, right? You can split up time in other ways. You could create traditions with one side of the family that's like the weekend before Christmas is when we all get together and make cookies or something and then, or we spend Christmas Eve with this side of the family. So just finding creative ways to split time with loved ones. If that's important to you, I think that that can be worked out too. It doesn't all have to be about like we need to go to all these different houses on Christmas Day and make ourselves bananas.

Laura

Unless you like banana flambe on Christmas. That could be your tradition.

Shanna

I think that's a good idea.

Laura

I would do that except I'm allergic to bananas.

Shanna

So tough.

Laura

Bananas and like avocados, right?

Shanna

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Luckily neither of those are a holiday food, so I am in the clear.

Laura

But you could put red sprinkles on avocado toast, and that would be festive AF, Shanna. Oh, true! Not for you, but for others.

Shanna

OK, that's a hot tip from BFP, folks. Spice up your avocado toast.

Laura

Make your avocado toast into a little Christmas tree. Yes.

Shanna

Oh, my gosh. We've got to add it to our next newsletter.

Laura

All right. Well, on that note, I think we've answered our holiday questions in this mini-soad.

Shanna

We have. And listeners, if you have any questions you want us to answer on an upcoming mini-soad, please reach out. Laura, where can everyone find us?

Laura

We're on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram at BFP Podcast. We have a website, bigfatpositivepodcast.com. If you want to send us an email, you can throw a voice memo in there. Just send it to contact at bigfatpositivepodcast.com. And another way you can reach us is by joining our really cool Facebook group. Just search Big Fat Positive Community on Facebook.

Shanna

Our show is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko, and Steve Yager. Thanks for listening, y'all. Bye. Bye.

Holiday Traditions With Kids: Ask-Us-Anything Minisode #4

December 9, 2022

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Episode Transcript

Holiday Traditions With Kids: Ask-Us-Anything Minisode #4

December 9, 2022

Listen Now:

This episode's sponsors:

Whisker Litter-Robot

Once Upon a Dance

Tags

Episode Transcript