I haven’t posted in a while so it feels like time for a general update since I am not feeling inspired with brilliant topics for posts.
We are lucky in this fostering house that we currently have a foster kid who doesn’t have a lot of trauma associated with Christmas. Being Muslim, Sunny never really celebrated Christmas before she came here.
When Sprout first came to us we asked her Mom permission to celebrate Christmas, and she was fine with it. So we just carried on when Sprout’s sister Sunny joined us too. It’s now been two Christmases here for Sunny, and both have gone well.
That hasn’t always been the case. Kiddo struggled mightily with Christmas when she was younger. She was only 4 when she came to us, but presumably had experienced some trauma around the holiday given how she reacted to it. This is super common among foster kids. New foster parents will often be super excited to give a kid a first “real” Christmas, only to be disappointed by a ton of acting out, overwhelm, disappointment, etc.
If you think about it, it makes sense. A lot of troubled families struggle with togetherness around the holiday. Folks with alcohol abuse issues find the holiday an excuse to indulge, which can spark fights. Fights can erupt over finances since Christmas is a financial strain for a lot of families. Extended families visit, which can cause disagreements. Families with little money can find themselves unable to provide gifts for children which can leave kids disappointed and feeling like they’ve done something bad if Santa didn’t come for them. There are lots and lots of ways Christmas can go badly awry.
Memories of those traumatic events can trigger behaviors in kids – outbursts, teariness, withdrawal – any kind of response to a traumatic memory you can think of.
Kiddo used to get soooo excited to open her gifts. Then she’d get overwhelmed quickly afterward, and be a bundle of oversensitive nerves the rest of the day. It would be super easy to trip her into what looked like a tantrum, but was likely flashback triggered. Christmas did not used to be fun for our first few years as foster parents!
Thankfully, Kiddo has had more good Christmases than bad in her life now. She’s a joy to shop for because she’s appreciative and fun about her gifts. She just opened her presents yesterday and I enjoyed the hell out of it. She loved the Tommy Hilfiger clothing (hell, the kid has a whole Hilfiger wardrobe from me at this point), the tiny Tabasco sauce keychain, the baby doll with hair like hers that she can practice on, the scented hair edge tamers, the fold up soccer goal, the squishmallow, and the shark slides tremendously.
Christmas with Sunny and Sprout went remarkably well too. I was worried there’d be tons of jealously but it worked out ok. We celebrated it on Christmas Eve because my husband had to work Christmas Day, and thank heavens for that because I could not take another question of “is it Christmas yet???” Ha!
The girls got dolls (Reborn for Sunny, and American Girl for Sprout – one that looks a bit like her because she’s Indian), lots of accessories for their dolls, stuffies, the new Disney movie Wish toys (we went to see it just before Christmas and they’re addicted to the soundtrack), jump ropes, yo-yos, fake poop toys (they might have been the biggest hit 🙄), a magnetic dart board for Sunny, arts and crafts kits, a magic potion making kit for Sprout, and a kids’ microscope for Sprout. Did I over buy? Probably. But they enjoyed the hell out of it so that’s good.
On Christmas Eve we also went to church, and the girls were angels in the Christmas pageant. I love the Christmas pageant and the candlelight singing of Silent Night at the end. My family loves it less. But I insist on going each year because it doesn’t seem like Christmas without it.
On Christmas Day, I took the girls to see Migration in the theater, which was cute. It was a great way to stave off the boredom that comes after Christmas gift opening is over, and seeing a movie on Christmas just might become a new family tradition. The weather that day was spectacular – 55° and sunny – so we spent the rest of the day playing outside without coats.
After it was all over, it took me DAYS to find homes for all the new toys, put away the boxes and gift bags, dispose of all the cardboard, and ultimately yesterday we took down Christmas decor and put it away in the attic. Why so early? Because tomorrow is Sunny’s 10th birthday, and I wanted to make the house totally birthday rather than a mix of birthday and Christmas. As a Christmas baby myself (December 21st), I know the pain of a childhood of birthdays mixed with Christmas, so wanted to avoid that for Sunny.
Mind you, in her culture birthdays aren’t celebrated, so this is only the 2nd birthday she’ll ever celebrate. We wanted to be sure she got one great birthday with a party for friends, and this year is it, in case she goes home to her relative before we get another chance. Last year we went out to dinner at her request and got birthday dessert there, so she’s never had a birthday cake with her name on it, so I ordered one for the party. The house will be decorated with balloons (we even have helium) and banners, she’ll open her gifts here (a cake pop maker and a fancy apron), then she’ll go to our local salon for a girly salon birthday party. The favor bags are full of salon girly fun (lip gloss, sun glasses, nail stickers, glow in the dark tattoos). Two of her best buds from school are coming to it, so it should be a fun time.
Anyway, that’s our news! We still haven’t had our Christmas OR Thanksgiving dinners with my Dad, because he was sick for Thanksgiving, and Sprout was sick for Christmas with a nasty cold that’s lingering. I suspect it may even be RSV given the cough she’s got. So we have plans on the 14th of January, which, absurdly, is the next afternoon we can all get together given my schedule, the girls’ schedules, and Seth’s work schedule. Yikes. I guess we should enjoy this weird between-Christmas-and-New-Years down time while we’ve got it!
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