Episode 297: Holiday Advice from Moms

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Have some wine and join us on the Whiny Palooza podcast with Rebecca Greene.

Welcome to the Whiny Palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Greene. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family.

Hello everyone, happy Whiny Palooza Wednesday.

You don't have to sing. Have some wine and join us on the Winey Palooza Wednesday with the Green family. We live, we laugh.

I don't know the rest of the words. We need Ella for the rest of the words. Ella and Max are upstairs. Seth is unavailable. So you are stuck with me and Lily tonight. Happy Wednesday. I hope you are having a good week. Uh, we are getting ready for Hanukkah tomorrow. So for those of you who don't know, you might be getting ready for Christmas, we are getting ready for Hanukkah, and our first night is tomorrow night. So what I did today is I put my list aside, other than a scheduled podcast that I needed to do, I put everything else aside and I said, lady, You gotta wrap and you gotta focus because tomorrow is Hanukkah. And I was feeling really stressed because there were literally boxes all over the house. I cannot believe how many presents I ordered.

You should have seen how many boxes there were.

We're gonna talk about what I'm gonna do differently next year so that I don't feel as stressed, but there were boxes everywhere and I was like, this is not gonna work for me because Hanukkah's tomorrow and nothing is wrapped. So I spent 5 hours today wrapping all their presents. Hopefully they appreciate it. I appreciate it so much. Bought way too much stuff. I'm glad Seth isn't here at this moment to talk about how much stuff I bought. But anyways, we're going to talk about our topic, which is holiday advice for mom— for mom— from moms. I can't talk. And for those of you who don't know, I have a Whiny Pluza Mom group. It's a support group on Facebook. It's free, and every month we do a different challenge. So November was the Thankful Challenge. We've had summer challenges, fall challenges, winter challenges, holiday challenges. So we just finished yesterday the December Holiday Challenge, and I think it was my favorite challenge so far, and I've done many, many challenges. And then I pick random winners to give presents to, and I did not have time to do that today. I wanted to pick winners to announce tonight, but I was focused. I was razor focused.

Focused, focused.

And I was like, I am not getting distracted by work. I am not getting distracted by housework. I am not getting distracted by the PTA. Although I did do some work and some PTA. Um, I did do a little of everything, but I tried to stay razor focused on wrapping, and when I stay razor focused, I get stuff done. So the holiday challenge was probably my favorite challenge so far because the comments that all of these moms had for all of the questions just completely blew me away. I was feeling stressed, so when I post stuff and I say stuff and I give advice and I talk about struggles and successes and ask questions. It's for me too, it's not just for you. Hopefully the mothers find it helpful, but it's also helpful for me. So all of these questions that I asked about the holidays and being stressed, it helped me too. So Let me tell you the questions that I asked and the fantastic answers that I got from a lot of mothers. So let's start with, what is your favorite holiday tradition? This was not about me being stressed. This was just— I wanted to hear— I wanted to get the women feeling heartwarming about the holidays because we can feel really busy and really stressed and overwhelmed, and sometimes we just need to sit back and think about what warms our heart for the holidays. Holidays. You want to say something?

I just wanted to say that like I was thinking like you don't have to have like it doesn't have to be like going out like somewhere like a tradition it can be like making cookies then cuddling up on the couch and watching a Christmas movie or something.

Oh I love that you said that I actually if you haven't found me on TikTok I actually just posted Lily and I and Seth watching a Christmas movie on Saturday night. I do love the Christmas movies. What about you? I like them, but what's your favorite Christmas movie?

Probably I really like Elf.

Yeah, she likes Elf. I really want to watch Home Alone. I feel like Home Alone is like the perfect Christmas movie, but I love Hallmark movies. I love all the Christmas movies. I get really into it and my husband makes fun of me, but I want to tell you that people said that they just loved being together, that we can be home, that we don't need to go do stuff like Lily said, being home as a family, being together, baking, baking cookies was a big one, and I love that everybody was talking about getting their children and their grandchildren involved. So Lots of wonderful traditions. For us, we go to Virginia almost every Thanksgiving. It's the one holiday that I'm pretty guaranteed to see my brother and his family, pretty guaranteed to see Seth's brother and his family because they live there too. And we always decorate my sister-in-law's Christmas tree with her and help her hang all the ornaments. And I love looking through all the ornaments. I've sent them so many over the years. I need to send them a new one. And my, my, one of my favorite traditions is to do the Christmas tree with them in Virginia because I don't have a Christmas tree. And I also am super excited because my children now know all the Hanukkah blessings. So I'm not saying that Seth and I aren't saying them alone. Now our kids are joining in and they know them, and it's just extra special to me. So you will see that because I will definitely share that. So tomorrow will be candle number 1, and we will say all the blessings. So second question: What is one thing you can change this holiday season to feel less stressed? So I was posing this question to mothers to help them, but I was also posing that question to myself to make myself think about what am I going to do differently this year to feel less stressed. So I love the answers I got. One of the most common answers is that we do not want to rush from house to house to house. One mother said she used to do 3 to 4 houses on Christmas. Lots of people said they used to leave the house and go to relatives for Christmas. Now they want to stay home. They want Christmas to just be home in pajamas, playing with toys, hanging out as a family, not rushing around. And I can totally appreciate that. You can appreciate that too. You understand we don't always want to rush around to other people's homes. And the mother— what the mothers also said was that people are welcome to come to them if they want to see their kids, but that they didn't necessarily want to rush around. So, um, another thing that came up over and over and over again is that we as mothers need to delegate more and ask for help more. And we don't do that. We tend to think that we need to do everything. And I want to tell Lily, who is sitting next to me, how much I appreciate her because— hi, Linda, how are you? One of the, one of the things that I most appreciate about Lily is that she will ask me, what can I do? Can I help you? I was folding laundry the other night. She was like, can I help you fold laundry? What can I do to help you? And sometimes she's a budding woman, sometimes she just knows how to help me and she doesn't even ask, she just goes and does it, and I so appreciate her. So I want to tell her that while she's sitting here. So we need to delegate, we need to ask for help, we need to stay home more and not be rushing around. And one of the mothers said, we cannot forget me time. And I think that during the holiday season, one of the things that falls to the bottom And I'm guilty. I take long walks every day, and today and yesterday I did not. And it's because I had other priorities to get stuff done for Hanukkah. But I can't forget the stuff that I do for myself because it's going to help us to feel less stressed if we keep making sure that we have some me time. So that was question number 2, and the comments and advice and ideas from the women blew me away so much that when I sat down to write my topic for the week, I was like, do not write about something else. You need to share what all of this wonderful advice that these women have given because you can help other people. So question number 3, do you have something to say?

Yeah, and I always try to say to my mom, like, in the car, like, when we're going somewhere, like One day, I don't know, I think it was last week, she was like, I have so much stuff to wrap. And I was like, yeah, but like, you should go like get your nails and like get a facial, do something for yourself.

I know. You know what Lily told me? So, um, this is kind of broken, so bear with me with the video. So one of the things that Lily does every day is she'll say to me, Mom, What did you do today? And I tend to tell her, and one of my biggest patterns is that I drop her off at school at 8:40 and then I just go non-stop until I pick her up. So I'm like, okay, I have 6-ish hours, what can I get done? How much can I get done? And Lily has said to me several times, she has said Why don't you just take a day for yourself? Go get a facial, go get your nails done, like don't do any work today. I love that she's trying to take care of me. So question number 3, if your children— Lily, I'm gonna ask you about this question— if your children could tell you one thing about the holidays, what do you think they would say? So think about it while I give them the answers. So What I said that my kids would say is they don't necessarily know how to put this into words, but I think that they would say, "Oh, thank you!" Linda likes the tinsel in my hair. Lily went to a birthday party and got braids, and the wonderful lady doing braids said, "When you come back to get Lily, let me put tinsel in your hair." So Fun for the holidays, right? So thank you, Linda. So what I said, which I don't think my kids could necessarily put this into words, but I'm gonna put it into words for them, is that a happy mom equals a happy holiday. And I think that the moms are the heart of the home. I think that we set the tone of the home, and I think that if we can be calm and happy, the whole family can be calm and happy. Don't you think? Yeah, so I said that if my kids could write this right now because I didn't ask them, they would say happy mom, happy holiday. And did I say anything else? My daughter did tell me the other day when I was stressing about all the boxes, there were boxes and boxes and boxes, she was like, Mom, just give us a box, you don't have to wrap. Why do you spend so much time wrapping? Just hand me a box. Do you like that I wrap?

It's the fun part.

I mean, come on, you need— I wish that I could turn this around and show you the enormous mound of presents that I wrapped today, but we are all organized. I have a Max pile, I have an Ella pile, I have a Lily pile. It's all wrapped, it's all organized, and I cannot tell you how much better I feel, right? So if you could tell us one tell me one thing about the holiday, what would you tell me?

Probably, this is not one thing, but like, don't like, enjoy it while you can. I don't really know.

Okay, think about it. If you have something to share, share it. I don't like this broken We will talk to technical support about the broken light that I'm using. So what would they say? The biggest theme from all of the mothers, and you can tell me if you agree, is that their children are looking forward to the downtime. So we— they get a week off of school, no alarm clocks, no homework, pajamas, movies, reading, cozy time.

Yeah, like, use it while you can.

Like, enjoy the relaxation. That was the theme of what the kids would say. Family, food, downtime. I'm sure they want some friend time too, but I think they want to relax. They want to eat a lot of good food. That was the theme. People were talking about appreciating traditions, including friends. One family includes friends in all the holidays, and their kids love that. So yeah, the biggest thing was no alarm clock, relaxation. So question number 4: What is your best piece of advice to moms this holiday season? And man, did I get some good advice. I needed to de-stress. I needed to, to get advice and give advice and What?

And restart.

Oh yeah, I restart. If you don't know this already, I restart many, many times during the day. If I get to a negative place, I automatically am saying to myself, it's time to restart. You need to take a deep breath and you need to restart. And I talked to this wonderful lady today. Oh my goodness, did I love her. She's a coach, she's a teacher, she's a Reiki teacher, she's a Qigong teacher, happiness teacher— oh my gosh, happiness coach, I should say. And she just inspired me to just look at things differently, and she definitely reset me. So that was a nice conversation that you will hear, I believe, January 5th. So, okay, so what are the moms telling us to, to have less stress this holiday season? The biggest thing, almost every single mom said to make lists. Man, do moms like lists, and I'm one of those moms, and yes, I have lots of lists. I have lists on my phone, I have lists in my planner, I have lists on the counter over there right now. So Yes to the lists. However, we do not have to get our whole list accomplished. I had a list, and I— and we have to prioritize our list. And the priority today was you have a 12 o'clock podcast that you have to do, and other than your podcast while your kids are at school, you need to focus on all of these boxes all over the house. So make priorities. Let's not write down 10 things and think we have to do 10 things in one day. And some of the stuff I'm gonna do tomorrow, and that's okay because it's not due today. So what is due today? What do you need to prioritize? Hanukkah is tomorrow, so Hanukkah is a priority. You have something to say?

Yes, I have a lot to say. Um, and we had a lesson about this, like, like prioritizing, prioritizing stuff in facts class, and like this like little like quiz thing on it. Like, don't— like, if you see like those like videos, like not realistic, and it's like they make like a 3-page thing on like stuff they have to get done, don't like stress yourself out about that stuff. The top things that you need to get done are like the things that you need to do.

Yeah, so what are like your top 2 things today? Like, I would start with like 2 things, and my biggest thing that I say to myself is what is due today? Like what has to get done today. Yeah, you don't have to do everything. One mother said one of my favorite things is that she uses Amazon for out-of-town family, and my mother loves to order gifts, loves to ship stuff herself. I want to order it from Amazon and click a button and have it delivered to my brother's house. Brandy, love your shirt. Oh my gosh, thank you, Brandy, so much. How are you doing? You posted the most beautiful beautiful picture today. You look gorgeous. I don't know what you're doing, but, um, your picture on Instagram was so pretty today. So use Amazon for out-of-towners. Give yourself grace. Oh my gosh, one of my favorite words. Do you know what that means when you give yourself grace? Like, it's instead of being hard on yourself. Okay. Delegate. Ask for help. Make sure to have me time. And one of Nicest things. Oh, that was summertime. Well, it was a great picture, and I wish we were in summertime. Brandy is like me, she's a summer girl, and I complained about the cold in the winter today to my kids, and Lily was like, we know, Mom, you already said this, Mom. And I said, well, get ready to hear it until summer. I'm used to it already. Get used to it, girl. So one of my favorite things is my friend Karen said that she has pool every day. Will you come swimming over the summer, or do you have a pool? Do you have a pool? If you don't have a pool, well, I want you to come swimming anyway so I can see you. But my friend Karen, she has a spreadsheet. It helps them stay organized. It lays out everything that she's bought already. It makes her husband feel better. It makes her feel better. Seth was like, you said you were gonna write everything down. Oh, your parents have a pool? I didn't know your parents had a pool. But yes, you need to come swim, please, and bring your children. And I want to hang out this summer, and we can sit on the deck and enjoy the sun, and I will dream about it until it happens. So spreadsheet. So what I think what stressed me out the most this year is that I didn't remember the list in my head of everything I bought. So how many gifts did I buy Max? How many gifts did I buy Ella? Who knows? It was all over the house. So next year, as I'm buying things, mostly on Amazon, I'm going to write it down. This is what you got, Max. This is what you got your mom. This is what you got Seth. So that I'm not trying to remember everything in my head because Honestly, I couldn't remember and it was stressing me out, so I'm gonna fix that next year. So what is— question number 5: What is a new tradition you would like to start with your family this year? So one of my favorite things is that my friend said that her children exchange gifts every Christmas Eve. Two women, two of my friends on the page, said that their their— the siblings exchange gifts on Christmas Eve, and I loved that idea. Brandy, exactly. Brandy says, great idea, I just keep buying. So my pattern every single year is that I just keep buying gifts. Click buy, click buy, click buy. And I'm like, you have no idea how many gifts you just bought Lily. I bought Lily 8 gifts one day. Do you think that I knew that I bought Lily 8 gifts? Because I'm not keeping track. So God knows I— for those of you who don't know what I'm staring at, I'm staring at the huge mound, huge mound of presents. God knows how much money I spent because I'm not keeping track. So if I write it down, I know how much money I spent and I know how many gifts each kid got. It is totally uneven, totally uneven. And I don't even care. And part of it is that, you know, Max— first of all, Max wants expensive things, which means he doesn't have as many little gifts as the girls, and he doesn't care because the big things are expensive. Brandy says, we get new Christmas PJs and slippers on Christmas Eve. I love that so much. And another mom shared that, and then everybody has matching PJs, and then everybody wears it Christmas morning, and then the pictures are are amazing. So I love that tradition. That is just a wonderful tradition. So I love the sibling gift exchange night. I would love to have a sibling gift exchange night for Hanukkah. And Lily and Ella have both asked me about shopping for their siblings. In fact, Lily bought Ella stuff at the craft show when she went with me. But like, as I look at this pile of gifts that they have, they don't need any more gifts. Is it adorable that they want to buy gifts for each other? Yes. Maybe I might wait until next year because I already spent too much. They could spend their own money. Maybe that's the answer. So I love the new pajamas. I love the advent calendars. One mom said she's gonna do an advent calendar— she's doing an advent calendar of doing things together versus stuff, and Staying home Christmas Day is a new tradition for a mother. Adding church into Christmas, one mom said. One mom said that her new tradition is that they go through a drive-through, they get dinner, and then they go look at Christmas lights. And then her kids are eating while they're looking at Christmas lights and not complaining that they're hungry, which is an excellent idea for me because I drag my family to go look at Christmas lights and almost every year they say, we did this last year, why are we doing this again? They say that about pumpkin farms too, like, don't you want to do the same stuff? I want to go, I want to go to Disney World, I want to go to the pumpkin farm, I want to go see Christmas lights. I don't know, I don't get sick of stuff, I guess. Oh, one mother said she's getting an artificial tree instead of a real one. Now If I was Christian and I was getting a Christmas tree, I would get an artificial one just to make my life easier, but everybody's got to do what works for them. The pictures of all the families going to get the Christmas trees is absolutely beautiful. I love all your pictures, keep all your pictures coming. I personally wouldn't want to deal with a new tree and needles everywhere and watering the tree. I go to my brother's house, They take out their pre-lit tree, they put it together, we hang ornaments, done. That's my kind of tree. So awesome, awesome challenge. My favorite challenge yet. I hope I can come up with good challenge topics ahead so that I can beat this one because this was a really good one with so many comments and so much feedback and so much advice and so many good ideas. So thank you. Thank you to all the moms who took part. I will pick winners. I want to pick lots of winners because it's December and it's the holidays, and I want to, um, I want to drop off lots of gifts. And the last thing that I want to say is, after the holidays, when the holidays are over, my recommendation to myself and to you is that we sit back with our family and we evaluate the holiday. What worked for you? What didn't work for you? What do you want to keep for next year? What do you want to change for next year? Have, have a family meeting, think about it yourself, and then it'll help you make the holiday season easier next year. 8 nights is a lot for me, and yeah, it's like I'm gearing up today for the 8-night marathon. So when I see you next week for Hanukkah, that will be my 7th night of Hanukkah. So we'll see how I'm doing. So I want to wish everybody as peaceful a December as you can have. My advice is sit down on the couch with your phone and press buy. Yes, I have gone to stores. Yes, I have bought presents at stores. Yes, it is a lot easier to just press buy on my phone. So thank you, Amazon, for making my life easier. And thank you everyone for joining me tonight, for your awesome advice. And I hope that you found something helpful. Hi Randy, how are you? And, um, I, I hope you have a fabulous week, and I will see you next week for Hanukkah night 7. Here I go, buckle up for Hanukkah! Bye everyone.

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