Before you get concerned, I am not talking a hangover in the alcoholic sense...just the overwhelming, over-stimulation and chaos that overpowered our precious James and how we are still dealing with the fall out from that.
Instead of diving right into that subject, I want to start by saying I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Overall I would say our Christmas was enjoyable...just jam packed and a bit crazy. For our family, it was like we had four Christmases in two days. Christmas Eve morning we had an aunt and cousin over for breakfast pizza and to open gifts. Christmas Eve we spent at my in-laws for dinner and the gifts. Christmas morning was just the four of us at home together (and some time spent at the park) followed by an evening at my parent's house for dinner and gifts.
James was pretty cute in regards to Christmas. If you ask him who was born on Christmas, he will respond with "baby Jesus". We actually made homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas and said happy birthday to Jesus...just as a way to make it fun for James at his current age.
Anyway...Christmas was chaos in its finest form. We discovered the same thing last year for James, and I have a feeling he won't be growing out of it any time soon. Then again, James is a fan of routine, so when that is thrown off (later bedtimes both nights, lots of people), he doesn't handle it in the most amazing manner, but who can blame him? There were several Christmas melt-downs, and James really wasn't interested in opening his gifts as people are shoving them at him and waiting expectantly for a perfect reaction...they certainly didn't get what they hoped for, that's for sure. I am not sure what people expect...James is two, almost three, and although his cousin is close to the same age (he turned three early December), they are quite different personalities. I think my brother and sister-in-law expected excited reactions to everything, and they seemed disappointed when they didn't get that reaction. Their son is more excited about opening the gifts and everything, so their expectations are different. You have to keep in mind this was James' fourth Christmas celebration, so by this time, he really isn't all that thrilled about opening gifts (not that he was from the beginning though).
Now it has been three days since Christmas, and we are still dealing with the melt-downs from James. Perhaps some of it is due to his age, but I think a lot of it is still recuperating from Christmas in general. All the toys are overwhelming, I think, too. I am considering putting some away and pulling them out later. James is constantly snatching toys away from Sam or not wanting Sam to play in the same area as he is in. I have to remind James that some of those toys are Sam's, and Sam is sharing them with him, so he needs to let Sam play as well. Then there has been a sudden increase in hitting Sam when James gets frustrated as well. Just this morning, we have had three different incidents that caused time-outs to take place.
I am ready for the Christmas craziness to dissipate...even if that means we need to pull down the Christmas tree earlier than normal and put all the decorations away. If that will help our boys calm down (mainly James), by all means, I am ready to do what it takes. It probably doesn't help that both boys are constantly wanting my undivided attention for the past couple days...or at least that is how it feels to me. Yesterday I even put all my energy into playing with James while Sam was taking his morning nap...we played trucks in the backyard, played with Play Dough, played with trains inside (pretty much anything James wanted to do), and even after that, he still insisted on my utmost attention when Sam woke up...I was hoping that would help the situation, but it really didn't, and I didn't get any housework done either.
I know things will settle back into place...I just wish I knew when it would calm back down.
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