Episode 401: December Sanity for Moms

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Call 1-800-BETS-OFF. No need to whine and whiney palooza. Have some wine and join us on the Winey Palooza Podcast with Rebecca Greene. Welcome to the Winey 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. Happy Whiny Plousa Wednesday! I'm very punchy. It's been quite the day. We're gonna tell you about our day. Thank you for the toy, Tanner. You're supposed to be finding Max's keys right now. Tanner, go look for Max's keys. So it is Wednesday, and I went to write about helping moms feel less stressed. So I sat down, it was Monday, I was like, I'm gonna write about helping mothers, and then I was like, Lady, you wrote the blog already. Just bring it back and talk about it. So I can't even tell you if Tanner—

we're talking about helping others with December's holiday sanity.

I'm about to tell her, tell them that, but you can't play with the dog right now.

Trying not to play with the dog. He's not listening.

Max, call the dog. Tanner, Max wants you. The topic is December Sanity for Moms. I already wrote it. I don't know if it was last year or the year before, but I brought it back so you can read it at whinyblues.com. But I want to talk about it. Why reinvent the wheel? I'll just add to it.

All those other bloggers don't know.

Are you punchy? Tell them why we're so punchy today.

Um, well, for, uh, our, our son misplaced his car keys and and we couldn't find our— our daughter also misplaced her keys to his car. So Rebecca had to drive Max to school and then pick him up and bring him home in addition to everything else.

She already had no keys. We had no keys to his car.

No keys to the car.

So the extra keys go in Ella's backpack because Ella goes home with Max. And if you live in Buffalo, New York, you know that it's snowy and cold, and we don't want Ella standing outside at his car waiting for him in the cold. So Ella has his extra keys so that she can go sit in his car and start it and wait for him, right?

Right, except she couldn't find her—

she couldn't find her keys. And I was like, neither of you can find your keys? We have no keys to Max's car. So I did take Ella to the orthodontist. I did instruct her to bring her backpack to the orthodontist, and I searched through her backpack and found one set of keys. I spent most of the rest of my day cleaning the house and looking for Max's keys. Yes, unsuccessfully.

And I did spend some time also looking through the house and then digging through the snow to get to the grass outside the driveway in the hopes that I could find it, having— if he had dropped it outside. But I had no luck.

And Max, Max, I looked for hours. Seth looked for hours. Max looked for hours. We've got Ella and Lily looking. We've— I asked the dog and the cat to go look. I was like, come on, Faith, go find Max's key. I said, what if they got stuck on Faith and she ran into the basement? And Max is like, I already looked in the basement. So send us good vibes to find Max's keys. Yes, I'm gonna have to go make a copy because now we're down to one copy. And I want to talk— it's December 4th, it is December, it is officially holiday season, and I want us to stay sane through the month. So let's talk about how we're going to do that. Awesome, because this is going to help me too. See, I need these reminders, so if I give you these reminders, I'm going to remind myself too.

Yes, to teach is to learn twice.

So I've gotten better at most of these. I want Seth's opinion as we're talking because as I was reading over this and editing it, I was like, wow, I have come a long way from the crazy mom buying gifts for everybody Number 1, we don't have to buy gifts for everyone. This used to drive Seth—

I'm gonna remind you of this in a week.

This used to drive him nuts.

I gotta get my third cousin twice removed teacher a gift.

No, in fact—

That's an exaggeration.

In fact, I don't even think they're gonna wanna give teachers gifts.

Woo-hoo, finally. Sorry, love you teachers, but I don't need to buy 27 Tim Hortons gift cards.

Okay, so anyways, please don't feel like you need to buy everyone a gift. In fact, I love that either my brother or his wife said to us one year, let's just pick names out of a hat. There's a bunch of us, like, just pick names. You, you know, if you're a huge family, just pick one name and everybody exchanges with one person. Or I love that we have started, you know, like, with your brother, we just buy the kids gifts. Like, I love those kind of things because people don't want to be bombarded. I just talked to my book club earlier and suggested we do one white elephant gift, and then we all just need to bring one gift, and I don't have to buy gifts for everybody.

Love it.

So minimize it where you can and reduce your stress, and don't put so much pressure on yourself. You don't have to go crazy buying every— I love the bus drivers, I love the teachers, we don't ride the bus, I love the mailman. Oh my God, I just don't want you to feel like overwhelmed with like everyone.

I seem to remember someone who used to do that, so thank you for coming for it. We're growing.

Yeah, for sure. I've come a long way.

You have, Virginia Slim.

Oh, I already did this one about discuss gifts and buy for less people. Yes, figure out how you can buy for less. So, um, I actually got that idea from someone. They said that they have a huge family and they draw names. So they had given me that idea. So just because you did a holiday tradition last year does not mean that you have to do it this year. I used to fall into that trap, and I used to think— my hair's a little flat.

Oh my God, your hair is fine.

I used to think that I had to do all the traditions that I did last year this year.

Yeah, notice we got away without going to a pumpkin patch this Halloween season. Oh, Sorry, I didn't know you didn't know that.

I did know that. Nobody cared.

They're teenagers, right?

But teenagers still go to the pumpkin patch.

The same teenagers who've been there like 10 times, 10 years in a row.

Well, bottom—

for years it was the tradition we had to go, and we couldn't just go to the one, we had to check them all out in the hopes that they might have some different fried dough.

So here's—

so different corn mazes.

Here's the bottom line. Discuss it with your family, and what does everyone want to do? Like, do you want to make gingerbread houses? I do. Do you want to do— does everyone want Elf on the Shelf? Let's talk about Elf on the Shelf for a minute, okay? Mothers drive themselves crazy. First of all, we all put alerts on our phone so that we remember at night to move the elf Hope nobody's listening. Not my house.

There's only one person who—

anyway, there's one person who's still looking for our elf.

I see what they're doing.

Our elf is Mensch on a Bench. Okay, so anyways, discuss it with your family. Do they want to do Elf on a Shelf? And if you do do it, don't stress about missing a night. Is there stuff that you want to skip? Is there stuff that you want to add? Is there stuff that you want to do different? Like, do you want to do your cookie baking. Like, I'm sitting here thinking, I want to light the menorah every night. Yes, I want to play the dreidel game. I want to make cookies with them. Do you want to know my tradition that is really special for me personally? I want to make them Hanukkah challah.

Yes, you love to make creative-shaped challah for Hanukkah.

So I don't know when I'm gonna have time. I'm gonna figure it out. Um, but during Hanukkah I like to make— I, I've done a dreidel, I've done a menorah, like I like to make a special challah for them.

So I will do a Jewish star this year. You haven't done that?

Yeah, I liked the menorah.

The menorah was cool. A star might be hard to get.

I'm happy to try the menorah, but I think— I'm happy to try the star, but I think the menorah is cool.

It is very cool.

So just, just don't think that you have to do something because you've always done it. I've always done gifts every night. I don't think I'm doing that this this year. So Seth and I will talk about that. Um, I've always done 8 nights of gift giving to my kids. I used to take the 8th night away and have them make that their donating night. I didn't really stick to that.

I think that's—

I think that's a great tradition to have the last night be a giving night.

I like that.

Where, you know, I think they all picked a charity or something.

Yeah.

So Yeah, we're not going to do gifts every night. We are going to light the menorah every night. So figure out what traditions work for you. And, uh, just because your other extended family members think you have to do something, you're, you're allowed to reject things. You don't have to do what's always been done. Okay, sit down and discuss what's important to everyone. So like, I really like to talk to my kids and have them each tell me one thing, no matter what it is. So if we're going on a trip, okay, what is the one thing you want to do at this place? If we're doing Hanukkah, what is the one thing that is important to you that we do for Hanukkah? So I tend to do that for stuff just to get their feedback and just get at least, you know, like if we're going to Disney and it's a Magic Kingdom day, I want them all to tell me their one ride that they have to go on. So that's just an example. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Moms matter. That's new for me. Oh, here's Emma. I love making gingerbread cookies. Yum. Eating out on Christmas Eve makes Christmas kitchen mass less stressful. Christmas mass less stressful. I didn't do that well at all. That is brilliant. You eat out on Christmas Eve so there's not a mess for Christmas Day. I love that idea, and I love that you love to make cookies. We all have our things that we want to continue, and I think that after the holidays, sometimes I like to just reflect on it and be like, okay, what went really well that I loved, and what do I want to do different next year? And I think that I overwhelm myself with thinking that I have to buy my kids like tons and tons of gifts and spend tons of money. Why do I think that?

It's an excellent question.

I think that, um, experiences. We bought our kids a Christmas gift. Do we want to tell them?

I think we should tell them after we do it.

Okay, we did buy them a gift for on Christmas. Christmas is Hanukkah this year, which is super exciting, and we have a special Christmas gift for our kids, so we'll report back after Christmas. Okay, so moms matter, and what I mean by that is that we get lost in the shuffle of what does everybody else want, and we forget to check in with ourselves and be like, what do you want? Like, I just told you, I want to make a challah. I want to light the menorah. Like, what's important to me? And it's okay for your kids. My husband is wonderful and he just wants to make me happy, but you know what? My kids can suck it up and make me happy. If they don't want to do the blessings, if I— Seth has been like, dude, it's not even a choice. Like, Seth is like, come downstairs, it's literally going to take you— it takes us like 5 minutes to do 3 blessings. I think it's only 3 blessings the first night, and then it's down to 2 blessings. And he'll be like— like, Max will be like in the middle of a game or something, and Seth is like, Max, it's gonna take you 5 minutes, get downstairs. Because they would— they would probably skip it. I hope they don't skip it when they don't live here.

Well, see, you gotta instill that value, dude.

I'm doing it every year. Every year I'm doing it. Do you see me doing it every year? I am instilling Jewish traditions and values in your children, in our children, our children.

You made them.

Okay, so don't forget yourself. You matter. And if we piggyback on that, one of the things that has happened to me many Decembers, many, many, many Decembers, is I get so lost in all of the stuff that needs to get done that the other stuff doesn't happen, and I'm not working out and I'm not eating healthy, and I'm out running a million errands, and I'm running through the drive-through, and I'm not taking care of myself, and then I feel like crap. And sometimes I'm up super late, like wrapping or doing holiday cards or whatever, and I'm not sleeping enough. If I focus on getting the stuff done and taking care of myself, the month is going to go better. Don't you agree?

Yes. Can't pour from an empty cup.

We're gonna keep telling moms that. I wish that I had all of this when they were little. Like, it's like, I— if I knew what I know now, then things would be so different.

Amen. There would be different things that you didn't know.

Yeah, but I would have just put a lot less pressure on myself. I think that I have always had a lot of self-imposed pressure that I'm working on changing.

Awesome.

Like I told you that I still have this need to be doing things all day.

Yes.

Like I still have that little twitch of get up, get this done. Like you can't sit here, you got to get up, you got to get stuff done. There is no set amount of gifts. I used to think that I had to do a minimum of 8 gifts for each child. I don't feel that way anymore. I have to even pay attention to what I've ordered because I'm not very good at that. Seth was like, what did you say to me? You need like a spreadsheet to keep track of what— like, okay, every time you buy something, write it down, track it. Okay, I'm telling you that I did not do that. I don't know that I'm going— maybe I could start it. Maybe I could go evaluate and start tracking it. But I definitely think that's something for me to store and start next November, because I started buying gifts in November. So I think as soon as I start buying gifts, I need to start the tracking, because I can't even tell you what I've bought.

Let's see. Yes, we have had— this has been a recurring theme, and then we go where they are and go, oh, I forgot I bought this, I forgot I bought that.

Which leads me to—

oops, I gotta go return stuff.

No, you know what I remember?

Seth said a spreadsheet last year. Thank you, Emma.

I forgot, Emma. I literally just remembered.

You don't have to do— I know you have an aversion to spreadsheets. What if you just made a list? You love to make lists.

I love lists.

You can make a note. It doesn't have to be a spreadsheet.

I have an idea for you. Instead of calling them spreadsheets, just call them lists.

Yes, just make a list, honey.

Just go make a list on your computer with some rows and columns.

I love you so much.

I— Emma, I literally just remembered it. Maybe I need to put an alert on my phone for November 1st next year, and the alert is gonna say, make lists of everyone's gifts, because I have gifts all over the house and I don't remember where you hid them. I have to remember where I hid them and I have to remember what I bought. Um, so it's okay to say no to your child. So after I had bought Lily a ton of presents and spent a ton of money last year, she then wanted to go buy a bunch of decorations for her room, and she already had decorations. And I was like, honey, I have spent a fortune on your presents, you already have decorations, we are not spending any more money. And guess what I said? No, I said no. Or I get to the point— this happens with my girls every year— I have bought— I have get to the point where I have bought them so much stuff and they send me lists of more stuff and I'm like, no, you're good, I've spent enough money, I, I don't want any more. Like, stop texting me. Now they text me lists and I have very good news. My son texted me a list. My mind is blown.

Can you believe it? I don't know, just you figure it out.

No, normally what he says is, I don't want anything, don't get me anything. And last year he said he wanted Hollister clothes. That's about all we got out of him. This year we got an actual list. I'm stunned. We have made progress. I said build in some downtime. What am I smoking? We do— Seth and I do like to sit down and watch a show together at the end of the night or read a book together. I will tell you, I personally— if you can do this, teach me how. Maybe it's utter exhaustion, but if I'm going all day and all night, I I need to unwind with something, and it's usually my book. And I need to decompress, and I need to tell my body that sleep is coming. I can't go from 100 to sleep. I have to wind down.

Yeah, but your book— then you need to decompress it from your book before you go to sleep.

Well, the problem is, yeah, I have— well, I have multiple books going, okay?

But some of them are not keeping you up at night?

One of the books— Seth and I are reading the Throne of Glass series. It's an 8-book series.

Yeah.

And it's intense. And I said to Seth yesterday, I just don't know that I can read this book before bed.

I read it in bed and then I have to read something else after I read that to relax.

Yes, yes, yes. I feel like it needs to be like 10 pages of that and then 10 pages of something light I don't know. Yeah, it's very intense. It needs—

it probably needs to be a daytime book, which goes back to your make downtime during the day so you can read during the day.

I have not built in reading daytime, and I need to do that for this book in particular because I'm a nighttime reader and I don't want to have nightmares because of my crazy book. If you have read this series, let us know what you think. Okay, less materialism, but no spoilers. Yeah, no spoilers. We just want to know what you think. Less materialism. We are all— Seth and I love experiences with our kids. I feel like taking Ella to the Taylor concert should just knock out Hanukkah and her birthday.

I think it should knock out a few more things, but that's a good start.

What else are you gonna do the following Halloween birthday? Yep. Ella, we took you to Taylor, so no gifts for a few years. No, we— that is crazy. That is not true at all.

I know you would never let me do that.

I'll tell you what would be awesome though, and they wouldn't agree. What would be awesome is 8 experiences and no material gifts. That would be a fortune.

It depends on what your definition of experience is. Like, well, like, some that don't cost anything.

Like, wicked. So So like going to Wicked would count, like, right?

Could volunteering at a homeless shelter count?

Yeah.

Could going to look at Christmas lights count?

Yeah. Oh, those are great ideas.

Thank you.

Um, I'm just seeing— yeah, experiences. We have experience ideas. Um, I love doing that with them. I love the concerts and the movies and the shows. I like that you're thinking of cheap gifts.

Well, I gotta balance out the expensive experiences you're gonna pick.

I like the idea of, um, Christmas lights being like, this is it, we're going to see Christmas lights. See, Christian people have a Christmas Eve where they exchange like one gift, and they have Christmas Day.

They were just gifts, gifts on Christmas morning. I didn't know there were any the night before.

Christmas Eve they exchange gifts.

I did not know this.

Some family— every family does it different. Like, okay, like, I will tell you, if she sees this, that from memory, Karen Kazmala does, uh, sister gifts Christmas Eve. And like, some people do like one set of family on Christmas Eve and then another set of family on Christmas Day.

Okay, I did not know that, right?

So we, we are going to gift them with a vacation.

Yep, Emma says vacation.

We agree with vacation, and that should be—

it won't—

that should— that probably should be it. Yeah, because you know, Emma, you know how expensive vacations are. So change your state to gratitude. This helps me every day. I try to spread this all over Facebook and to my friends, and it's like our mindset is what is making or breaking our day. So like, if I can feel gratitude that I'm able to provide the gifts and buy the gifts and do the holiday cards and make the cookies, and like, I'm lucky to get to do this because, you know, there's people struggling who can't afford gifts for their family. They, um, they're, you know, they're working long days and have no time to bake. Like, I'm very blessed, and if I'm in a thankful, blessed, gratitude state, then I'm less stressed. So remind me of that.

I will do my best.

Gently, nicely, right?

So that you're still grateful.

So that I'm grateful for you, because when you're gentle and nice about it, I'm thankful.

Yes. When you maybe yell it to me or at you, it doesn't go so well.

Ah, feel— oh, to the fan. The last thing that I wrote about last year or the year before is grief and feeling stressed about grief. And this is a topic that comes up for every single holiday. I mean, I have the luxury of talking to lots of women And this comes up frequently, that they're grieving, you know, their mother, their grandmother, their husband, whatever, whoever is absent for the holiday. And it makes a lot of people stressed and sad, and it makes a lot of people want to just like ignore the holiday and not do the holiday. And, you know, I talk to moms about, you know, their kids and that their kids want them to do the holiday even if they don't want to, and that their kids deserve for them to try to still enjoy. Their kids want them to enjoy the holiday with them, and they don't want their moms to be, you know, wanting to skip the holiday. It's just an example. So if you can find maybe some new traditions— we were just in Virginia visiting our brothers and their families, and One of my brother's friends was telling us that his grandmother died, and that was the house that they all congregated in. So, like, they don't have their home base. They don't have the place where they all get together for the holiday. So he's like, we need, like, new traditions, and we need a new place. He's like, I'm trying to provide, like, the new place where everybody can come gather for the holiday. So it's a time to make new traditions if people are absent, and it's a time to honor them. Like, if you're— I love that my friend talks to me about things that her mother loved. She talks about her mom all the time, and I love it. And she'll be like, you know, I'm gonna go to this ice cream place and have an ice cream sundae in my mom's honor to celebrate her. So like, what does that family member love, and what can you maybe do to honor them for the holiday? So I understand your stress. You know, sometimes it hits me at holidays who's missing from the table, don't you think? Yeah, we were talking about that at what holiday? The last holiday. Yes, we were just talking about who we used to get together with for the holidays and who is missing and who's absent and who's, you know, and how we can continue on traditions that they would want us to be doing. Your loved ones who are not here anymore want you to celebrate. They want it to be special, and I'm sure they would love for you to think of them.

Amen.

So the last tip that Seth and I want to add that we were teasing each other about and talking about before we started is that it does not need to be perfect. Nothing needs to be perfect. I used to think the house needed to be perfect, the cookies needed to be perfect, The gifts needed to be perfect and perfectly wrapped. Do you remember? Oh my God, I used to like perfectly wrap everything.

They rip it off in 2 seconds and don't even care.

Oh my gosh, I would spend the day wrapping and it would take them 2 seconds to open it, and I would be like, what the heck?

So I'll open it really slowly.

I would appreciate that. Are we buying each other Hanukkah gifts? We didn't talk about that.

I believe we're going on vacation.

Is the vacation our gift?

Yes.

Okay, so done, check it off. So don't worry about perfection. It's all about being with your loved ones, and your loved ones don't care if it's perfectly wrapped. They don't care if the cookie is perfect.

Good is good enough.

Good enough is one of my favorite new mottos. So hopefully one of those tips, or more than one of those tips, will help you be less stressed and it helped me. I think I need to do that every year to remind myself.

Good idea.

So I want to tell them about my very exciting Friday podcast.

Yes.

Oh my goodness, so Friday is my 400th episode.

Amazing.

So, um, how would you describe it? Are you interviewing—

I interviewed you for your 400th episode about amazing things you've learned along the way.

It was fun.

I liked it.

Every time Seth and I do the podcast, it feels like a therapy session. You are a wonderful therapist. I think that you're gonna enjoy it. Yes, I enjoyed doing it. I'm super excited to share it with you, and I'm super excited that it's number 400. I also want to tell you that the Whiny Pooza Mom group on Facebook is doing the December Holiday Challenge. We're in the middle of it. You can come and join it and jump in, and you can comment on all 5 of the days, December 1st through December 5th, and all of your comments get entered for prizes. I like to give away prizes, and, um, it's just a supportive, non-judgmental community for you to come and join and, and feel the love from all the moms. And what else do we want to share?

Go to winopalooza.com, find the Linktree, sign up for all of Rebecca's free resources including the 3 times a week free email newsletter, and make sure as always to like, share, rate, review, comment, and subscribe.

So go share this with the mom who needs to hear it so that they can feel less stressed for the holidays. And I hope it's a wonderful month. I hope you can enjoy the journey of December, and I hope you're not freezing like me. You live somewhere warm? I'm very jealous right now.

They just closed Buffalo schools for tomorrow.

Oh really?

Not Williamsville yet, but Buffalo.

Oh my God, what's going on tomorrow? Are we gonna have a snow day? Who is watching this? Are we gonna have a snow day tomorrow? Stay tuned.

We'll see you all next week.

See you next week. Have a good week. Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, Leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time. This show has been produced by Market Domination LLC. To discover how you can have your own show completely done for you and turn it into a real published book and become the authority in your marketplace, go to www.marketdominationllc.com/podcastoffer.

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