It's a bit funny to me how the past 18 years have changed from Christmas to Christmas when children are added, and additional children are added. When you first begin having children, everyone is clambering to spend time with your new bundle of joy during the holiday season. When you have your second one, people still want to see your new little one, but some of the excitement has worn off. When your third one comes along, it's almost as if your children are simply an extension of you and everyone just wants to see "the family". By the time child #6 comes along, everyone has lost interest and moved on to the next sibling in the family having children.
There's little Christmas excitement with baby #6 outside of the family because everyone has already experienced that baby's first Christmas excitement with you, but now it seems like little more than an old habit. "Yep, we've done that and gotten that before." For the parents of baby #6, things change in the complete opposite direction.
When you're a parent of more than two children, there are new difficulties you get to experience with each new child. When you have two young ones, as in before Kindergarten, it's easy to pull the wool over their eyes and you can literally buy every single Christmas gift right in front of their eyes and they'll forget about it merely days later (sometimes later that day). Or, you can do like Kristen and I and hide everything beneath your jackets. "What giant pile of stuff beneath our jackets?"
When Harper came along, Riannah was too smart to have the wool pulled over her eyes. Now we had to start getting smart and shop during optimal time frames when Riannah wasn't around. Not that difficult, and it's even easy enough to just split the party while at the mall.
When Willow came along, Riannah and Nolan were too smart to have the wool pulled over their eyes, and we had to start shopping in shifts. However, there was one more wrench thrown in there: the kids like to pick out gifts for each other. Now we had to juggle times for allowing the kids to go with one of us to pick out gifts for their siblings.
Now that Isla has entered our family, we've created this chaotic web of present shopping that can make anyone go crazy. I took the four girls out for lunch and shopping today while Kristen took Nolan out for lunch and shopping. We were able to get gifts for Kristen and Nolan, but not Harper, Willow, and Riannah. At the same time, Kristen and Nolan picked out gifts for us, but nothing for me from the girls.
You can see the chaotic web forming.
The addition of more children creates more opportunities we have to create so that each one can pick out presents for their siblings and us parents. I'm sure someone can do the math to figure out how many trips to the mall or Target that requires, but I'm not going to bother. All I know is that it amounts to a lot of trips, and we've only knocked out a couple. There isn't really time during the week, so that only leaves the weekends. And if you look at the calendar, there aren't that many weekends left before Christmas comes around.
At least the kids enjoy picking out gifts for their siblings as it makes those many shopping trips that much more enjoyable. And it gives us an excuse to go to the store without the entire crew in tow.
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