Pyjamas on the Polar Express and the Mad Christmas Frenzy

As if being a parent wasn’t busy enough already, the onset of the Festive Season brings with it a set of additional time-management requirements.  A string of extra activities from school/nursery will see parents squeezing in nativity plays, Christmas parties, Christmas fairs and possibly more, all to be fitted around extra family commitments.  Then there’s the Christmas shopping (gifts and food!).  For Cosycat Baby Gifts, this time of year also brings with it a surge of sales activity, as customers place orders for our handmade Personalised Christmas Stockings.  In an attempt to survive the increase in orders my business partner (aka my Mum!) and I have spent the year cutting out stocking shapes and sewing up the socks (ready for the names when the orders come in).  This does mean, however, that we have to be thinking about Christmas at times of the year when most people would rather not.

Piles of stockings

This year we have been honoured to receive a stocking order from ThreeUK for two stockings which have been featured in their Merry Chris-mas advert.  This has been a definite highlight of the season for us!  Watch the video here!

The 'Chris' Stockings!

Despite being busy we very much enjoyed our first nativity this year.  On asking my Three-year-old what part he was playing he told me “I a shepherd mummy.”  Great, I thought.  I should have stopped there because the next time I asked him he said “I not a shepherd.  I a robot!”  I was quite relieved to discover that he actually was a shepherd.  Phew!  On a less satisfactory note, with the extra time being spent at his pre-school, I have noticed that a Christmas card postbox has appeared for the kiddies.  That’s just pressure I can do without right now!  Am I somehow expected to write another 20-odd cards to all of the children at pre-school so we don't feel bad when our child receives a card?  (The old and cynical me wonders at which point in my life the most fun and exciting thing turned into a proper ball-ache which I absolutely hate.)  How am I writing this blog I hear you ask?!  Don’t worry, I’m asking myself the very same question!

The robot shepherd

Count your Christmas blessings though!  One of the advantages to being self-employed on a small scale is that you escape from the charade of the office Secret Santa (something which I’ve not had to do now for three years since becoming a mum).  Christmas shopping with children is a gauntlet which most people will avoid running at all costs, and my own attempts at buying gifts this year have been planned strategically around periods of absence of my 3YO.  This is due in part to his go-go-gadget hands, the risk of a tantrum, and the general difficulty of containing him within a 1-metre radius of myself.  Which leaves just the challenge of Christmas shopping with a pram (and not-so-little baby).  I have honestly got to the stage where I will be severely deterred from entering a shop if it means opening a shop door and bumping up a step at the same time.  Whilst all for buying local and supporting the high street, going shopping with kids is challenging.  This year my dinosaur-obsessed three-year-old has tasked us (via the medium of “Farmer Christmas”) with sourcing a pentaceratops dinosaur model.  Due to the specific nature of this item, my only chance of securing one was to order online (which has now been done, after various discussions with my husband about how we really needed to check Father Christmas’ pentaceratops stock this week!).  It is now in hand – a massive relief – since 3YO hasn’t stopped talking about it since his birthday, when he had a triceratops.  Also ordered online, I received an hilarious communication from the supplying company to inform me of the imminent arrival of my item, complete with a picture of a glamorous model eagerly anticipating her order (which I thought couldn’t be further from the real-life reality of someone waiting to receive a roaring plastic dinosaur).

"I can't wait to receive my Jurassic World Roarivores Triceratops!"

I’m not the only one trying to fit those extra family commitments around work.  A builder we use, on not answering one of my calls texted me to apologise for not picking up, as he was on the #PolarExpress.  How I laughed!  I was not laughing when the following week he told me that his wife had to go out and get him pyjamas to wear on-board (matching set for the whole family - apparently it’s a Polar Express thing!) because he didn’t own a pair.  Well that’s a thought that I now can’t unthink.

The other gauntlet being run at this time of year (possibly even at the same time as the Christmas shopping) is the popular phenomenon of “#Whammageddon”.  For those unfamiliar with the term, this is the act of avoiding hearing the Wham Christmas classic “Last Christmas” during the period of 1^st to 24^th December.  I am reliably informed by Absolute Radio that only the original version counts.  If you hear the song, you’ve been Whammed!  At this time of year, I am less bothered about being Whammed and much more concerned about the possibility of being “McCartneyed” to coin a phrase.  For me, I will go to great lengths to avoid hearing my personal most hated and loathsomely-irritating Christmas song – “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time” by Wings.  I have been known to walk out of shops (much in the same way that I am compelled to leave the room whenever “The Sound of Music” is on TV).  Sadly, this year I got well-and-truly McCartneyed in #TKMaxx.  I had the pram, and a basket, literally so full of boxed toys that I had to make my way to the tills from sheer inability to physically pick up another item.  This is the moment when I hear those sickening first few notes of the child’s Casio keyboard with the comedic delay, thinking “I have nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide.”  Damn you, Sir Paul.

Yet, despite it being arguably the busiest time of year I’ve still found time to run two salt dough workshops through my volunteering activities, spreading a little bit of love at this special time of year.  Who doesn’t love a Christmas decoration keepsake?  Whilst lots of little people have enjoyed playing with cinnamon dough and making a gingerbread man, it’s been really pleasing to see the parents also enjoying the craft - theirs can be rubbish but mine's going to be perfect!  In our house we went one step further and bought paint pens and sealer glue to decorate and preserve the creations.  Which leaves two options: paint them yourself and have them look pretty as gifts for the family or let the pre-schooler loose on them and end up with a mish-mash of random colours and abstract scribbling whose main virtue is simply comedy.  It was worth it though to see the reaction of the family when presented with the “presents” that 3YO made for them and imagining that space at the back of the otherwise perfect and colour-co-ordinated tree where the offending items might be concealed from view.

Move over Jackson Pollock!

I’m recreating a recipe here for you all to enjoy – if you still have time for some last-minute Christmas activities! This makes enough for a workshop with 10 people, or plenty for play and keepsakes for home.

600 grams plain flour (plus extra for rolling)
300 grams table salt
1 pot ground cinnamon
1 table spoon cocoa powder
Water to mix

If you can be bothered, sieve the cocoa powder and cinnamon into a measuring bowl and make a note of the weight – then top this weight up to 600 grams with the plain flour.  The idea is to have 600 grams of flour, less whatever you’re putting in to colour the dough.  The darker your dough the better, as it whitens significantly on drying.  Mix in the salt.  Add water a little at a time until you get a smooth dough that you can wipe fairly clean out of the bowl.  Knead with plenty of flour.  (It will keep overnight and possibly longer wrapped in cling film.)  My gingerbread cutters (purchased many years ago from #Lakeland) have moulds to make fun faces on the gingerbread men.  Use the moulds on rolled out dough about 1cm thick and then cut out the gingerbread shapes (flour your cutter to stop it sticking).  Use a Japanese chopstick to punch a hole through each head (nice!) to thread ribbon through for the tree!  Controversially I always leave salt dough to air dry, but you can ‘bake’ it at a low temperature to speed up the process.  I involve my 3YO at each stage of the process – it keeps him very entertained.  Let the carnage begin! 

Wishing you and your families a very special Christmas in 2019 and much happiness and prosperity in 2020.

Aimee Flower is the founder of Cosycat Baby Gifts, a part-time translator, a full-time mummy of two (and cat mummy of three), and regularly volunteers with her local NCT branch.