There was no holiday card this year. I couldn’t even bring myself to log in to social media for long enough to post a holiday wish there. I love you all, and I appreciate the wishes you’ve sent. You’ll have to take my word for it.

I thought maybe a little time and space would leave me with some clarity for a New Years wish, but my mind is still a flurry. I don’t know how to sum it up in a highlight reel, so I guess I’ll try here.

I’m simultaneously overwhelmed by nostalgia and underwhelmed by reality. If I’m being honest, this isn’t new this holiday season.

We traveled for Christmas this year, spending the holiday with my husband’s family at a mountain retreat hours from home. It was beautiful there. Fun memories were made. The was only one hour of messy meltdown with our kids, which isn’t bad for a holiday in a neurospicy household (holidays equal the perfect storm of high emotions and expectations along with lack of routine, a sure recipe for a very bad time). Overall, it was a great success.

What we managed, miraculously, to hold together by thin threads on our trip has most certainly come undone since we got back to our safe space. The morning of the 27th, I stumbled downstairs from a lovely night’s sleep to what looked like the scene of a serious burglary, if coupled with the aftermath of a raging frat party — paper, packaging, clothes, toys, and electronic cables in tangles on every surface; dirty glasses and dishes galore; an explosion of winter gear and suitcases.

As my husband and I slowly worked through loads of laundry and dishes and found homes for food and gifts from our holiday, we were serenaded by guttural screams and grunts emanating from upstairs and the basement as our boys played games with friends on their new electronic devices. They periodically fought over who could next drive their new go kart from the grandparents. On the rare occasion that they took their bodies outside, the youngest would roar, crying, into our house after an explosive spectacle of brotherly (un)love at our neighborhood pocket park. Their overstimulated brains and bodies refused food and breaks. They acted like jerks, and all of my I’m-a-terrible-parent-raising-entitled-brats triggers were activated in at least 1,000 ways. (This pattern has repeated each day since, in a Groundhog Day-esque manner.)

By bedtime each night, I am cursing Christmas as I have every year since I’ve become a parent. That’s a fact that’s caused me a lot of guilt over the years, but it’s true for me. Just in case it’s true for you, I’ve come to relative peace with it and I invite you to, as well. I’m still a good parent. So are you.

Here are a few facts (for me, at least):

• The pressure of making the holiday season magical for our children is the trifecta of maximum stress: 1) expensive, 2) exhausting, and 3) invisible.
• While we want our kids to grow up, seeing the progression over the holiday season breaks your heart a little. For instance, this year the holiday books we’ve made a tradition of reading in past years lie in an untouched heap under the tree. The boys didn’t help us decorate for the first time ever. We left most of our bins of decor in the storage room untouched, and they never noticed. They didn’t ever ask to get the holiday train out, which was the highlight of Christmas for so many years. Their interest in making Christmas cookies and candies was nearly non-existent, so it didn’t happen. (If I can’t even motivate them with dessert items, there’s really no hope.) It all makes me so sad, and I know it’s just the beginning of having big kids.
• Part of our job as parents is to shift our children’s holiday focus over the years from receiving to giving, and there’s resistance and struggle there. Their gifts are getting smaller and more costly (electronic, mostly), so there are fewer boxes for them to open. They are more focused on the items they didn’t receive than the (really expensive) ones they did. (Again, with the raising-entitled-brats trigger.) Our attempt to encourage the boys to *give* gifts to others fell flat (especially for mom, which is maddening to say the least).
• The happiest family memories from this year were the low-pressure, no-planning outings. We at cheap burgers with my parents and took the boys to Elitch Gardens Luminova to ride rollercoasters, makes ourselves dizzy on the teacups, and do family death-drops on Tower of Doom on an unseasonably warm December night. The adrenaline rushes shocked our children into acting like children again, wearing light-up necklaces and throwing our money away for giant stuffed animals. It was actually magical. Similarly, we took a family bus trip with my sister- and brother-in-law and the kids to the Strawberry Hot Springs and defied the odds by having a really good time with absolutely no cell service.
• On the bright side, in past years, the pressure of crafting a “perfect” holiday season led me to spending lots of time, energy, and money — buying, baking, wrapping, and forcing costly experiences. While it wasn’t my intention, I ran on resentment, stress, and fatigue during those seasons, and my expectations never matched the reality in our household. It feels good to have stopped the bleeding there, but the holiday feels a little hollow for me since I actually enjoy the lights, music, and festivities myself. My plan for next year: find other friends or family to enjoy those experiences with so I can honor my own desires without resistance from the members of my family that don’t share the love.

I hope you had the happiest holidays. If that’s not quite the case for you, I hope you find peace in swiftly returning to normalcy and routine. Any which way, gratitude for you; love to you; and wishes for magic for all of us in the New Year.