In lieu of exchanging gifts, my mother, three sisters, two brothers, additional in-laws, friends, boyfriends, and significant others over the age of 18 have a Yankee Swap on Christmas Eve. The exact number of participants varies each year due to marriages, divorces, estrangements, break-ups, new homes (shout out to my BFF's family for moving an hour away), etc. Regardless, every adult brings one gift to enter into the swap and leaves with a different one... Unless you, like myself, buy something special with yourself in mind, such as the 30 rack of Bud Light and rolls of paper towels I put in last year... It's funny, too, sometimes you end up with something you never expected. Like the year I received this Neckline Slimmer... or my mother ended up with this lingerie...
But there is something that you can expect every year: the sister that I am babysitting for this week will inevitably bring a Crock-Pot. I'm not kidding. Every year, for as long as I can remember, someone has unwrapped a Crock-Pot. Some years our mom takes pity and keeps it... again. Some years my sister takes it back home, but no doubt, this year, I'm taking it. After this week, I get why she brings the Crock-Pot to the swap: it works Christmas miracles!
Being a parent is literally a full-time job. Kudos to all of those working parents out there, you're crushing it! Days are jam-packed with washing laundry, and doing homework, and grocery shopping, and basketball practice. The list is clearly never-ending. Then, when you're trying to get stuff done and your kids are watching TV, they watch these shows where the moms have all day to prepare dinner and they wonder why you keep feeding them cereal for two meals of the day. BUT low and behold, some genius out there invented a Crock-Pot, slow cooking tacos and meatballs galore! Isn't it nice to think that someone is out there looking out for us moms? (I'm including myself in that category until tomorrow morning). Which is a good thing, too, because there are some assholes out there just trying to make our lives harder! Like the jerk who created Elf on a Shelf.
Meet Oodle - my sister's kids' Elf on a Shelf.
Oodle is like the anti-CrockPot.
He makes no one's life easier and brings anxiety to the Christmas season. Out of the 5 days I have been a mom, twice I have forgotten to move Oodle before climbing into bed, and have had to get up in the middle of the night to find a new location for this bitch! I'll tell you, it is adorable watching my two nephews who still believe in Santa wake up and run around the downstairs looking for Oodle, but c'mon! Santa already sees you when you're sleeping! He knows when you're awake! And when you're not awake, Mom or Dad has to go find a new place for Oodle! To make it worse, I've noticed that some parents aren't helping each other out. Pinterest and Facebook are flooded with Elf on a Shelf ideas! Elves ice skating around the kitchen table. Elves writing notes to their families. Elves building a freaking igloo out of marshmallows! RELAX, just move your Elf at night like everyone else and stop making it harder for others to keep up!
I get it. Crafty moms and dads exist. Culinary moms and dads exist. Busy moms and dads exist. Parents, just like kids, come in all shapes and sizes (if your size it too big, hit me up, I'll let you borrow my Neckline Slimmer), but my point is this: I've realized this week that parenting is a day-by-day vocation, and it's freaking hard! In my experience as a spoiled-rotten daughter, your kids have NO IDEA how much work you do so they probably don't thank you for 85% of what you spend your life doing to make theirs easier.... but that's okay. Because someday, they will have kids of their own, or their sister will ask them to babysit for a week, and they won't remember that one time in 2013 when Oodle stayed in the same place for 6 days in a row... and they'll have no idea that the meatballs you heated in the Crock-Pot were actually frozen from Costco. They'll be thankful that you tried, that you were invested, and that you were there. Hang your hat on that this holiday season. If you're a parent, you're a Rock Star!
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