When looking back on your own family traditions there is a natural
desire to pass them down to the next generation. We'd put up the
Christmas tree on Thanksgiving or sometimes the day after if Dad
thought it would seriously stress out Mom while cooking dinner. Each
child would be allowed to open one gift on Christmas Eve. My paternal
grandparents would literally load us up with full-sized varieties of
Hershey candy bars to give us a sugar rush for the next twenty years.
We'd do the occasional cookie baking and hot chocolates, egg nog and
cheer. I'd spend time playing new Christmas songs I learned on the piano each year. We'd be up hours before the sun, sometimes the over-eager
little me even up at midnight trying to pry my parents out of slumber in
order to go through what Santa had left. All the while my mother
convincing me that I must have interrupted Santa and if I kindly went
back to sleep Santa would come back and leave more. To my dismay there
wasn't any more in the morning than there was at midnight. Santa would
leave stacks of unwrapped toys one section of the room was for me, one
section of the room for my little brother. In our stockings we always
had one giant apple and one giant orange with a single chestnut for good luck.
Santa was always good
to me, and filled my childhood years with magic and love. I had hoped
to pass down so many of my memories and the way we did things when I
was a child, because it was such a beautiful time in my life. But then
Noah came along and changed everything. The way we do the holidays
entirely.
We didn't get home with Noah until January 9th, 2009. All those years ago in a blog so fresh and new I wrote:
The day Noah was born his daddy bought him an outfit in the hospital
store that says "Special Holiday Delivery" and matching socks with
holly. We plan to put him in it tomorrow, and celebrate with a late
Christmas. We're going to open presents together - the three of us! I
just pray this feeling lasts, and that Noah comes home to stay for years
to come.
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| Our First Christmas together celebrated January 9, 2009 |
Noah still heavily medicated was in and out of
sleep when we did our make-up Christmas. But I remember it just like
yesterday, holding him in my arms in my pajamas the three of us by the
Christmas tree. Things got harder the second year. Noah still was
very much a distraught little baby. He cried often and frequently
nothing made him happy. I sure tried. I tried everything. Realizing
that things were overwhelming for him, there was no ability to attend
family gatherings, and we decided we were not able to leave the comforts
or the safety of our own home. A few family members visited us, but
only for brief amounts of time in order to ensure Noah wasn't
overwhelmed. By the third year we started to realize that some parts of Christmas
were actually one of the few things that seemed to calm and comfort
Noah. The tree went up early, lights, songs, Christmas movies.
Whatever it took to keep him happy. But how we went about the holidays still was different from how I ever dreamed it to be.
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| My Special Delivery and the Best Gift I've Ever Received |
I longed for what felt
like broken childhood traditions. I couldn't really give Noah an apple
or an orange, he couldn't eat solid foods, he couldn't unwrap his own
gifts, he couldn't even get me up in the middle of the night to say
Santa had come. I wanted it, I still to a large degree want it. But
I'm learning that I can reinvent the holidays with a child that has
special needs and that it is okay to start new traditions that fit his
needs and us as a family.
Instead of an apple and an orange,
Noah gets cotton candy and fast dissolving chocolates. We put the
Christmas tree up weeks before Thanksgiving even hits. He has his
trains, switch toys and Christmas books and movies to entertain him.
And allow him the freedom to make a mess of the ribbons and essentially
un-decorate the lower branches of the tree on a regular basis.
Each year we
seem to incorporate something new to grow as Noah grows with his
abilities, likes and dislikes. And are doing a night before Christmas
chest for both the boys this year. I found these cute little chests at
Hobby Lobby, and I stuffed them with all the essentials you need the
night before Christmas; a set of holiday pajamas, Christmas movies,
coloring books, reading books, sensory activities, fast dissolving chocolate Santa and
an apple juice box. I painted each child's name in nail polish on the
boxes since it was all I had on hand. I made it work and poured a lot of love into each of them. Making new memories for me and for the boys.
I'm finding if I can find
new ways to make the holidays fun and work for Noah and us as a family
then it doesn't matter the traditions that either Chris or I had as
children. It's about our children not what necessarily was a part of
our childhood, but what our children will remember most about theirs.
And by reinventing the holidays I'm building memories they can both look
back on and say remember when...
Love,
Noah's Miracle by
Stacy Warden is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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