Am I right in thinking it’s only the 1st of December tomorrow? Even with Christmas almost a month away, the mass of toy adverts have been on the TV since September, reducing my children into miniature Andy’s from Little Britain stating ‘I want that one’, to every toy advert that’s shown. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Grinch, I like Christmas, especially now I’m a Mum, but I just wish that it would start and finish in December and not before.

There is a lot of excitement on the run up to Christmas, my kids are huge fans of the festive period. But with decorations going up mid-November in some houses, it just means the children have to wait longer for the big day to come. The rule in our house is that the decorations don’t go up until the advent calendar arrives. Every year ‘Santa’ delivers the same advent calendar to us, complete with chocolate coins, when he comes to collect their Christmas wish lists. Earlier today the children were putting the finishing touches to their (very long) Christmas letters, while hubby was searching the loft for the advent calendar that tends to go missing after the chaos of Christmas is over.

My eldest son is 9 on Christmas Eve, it is an exciting time of year for him, but also a crazy time for all of us. I always want to make sure he feels like it is his birthday and not the day before Christmas. To ensure this it often means a party, a time that he can claim as his own. Last year, he invited his closest 4 friends or “The Inbetweenies” as me and hubby renamed them following a hilarious dinner at the local American diner. After they had eaten their body weight in chips, ribs and ice-cream, 3 of the boys came back for a sleepover. The twins were relocated to their grandparents house, the boys were chatting and laughing in my son’s bedroom in their side by side beds. Me and hubby kicked back and relaxed with a bottle of red and after a few ‘no more noise’ warnings, the boys settled down. Until about 2am that is, when 2 of them became caught up in a vomit relay between my son’s bedroom and the bathroom. While I stripped vomit covered bedding, hubby sorted out vomit covered children. As soon as it was light out, I rang the parents. They came one by one to collect their sons as I passed over a party bag along with the bag of vomit covered clothes and waved them off with a cheery ‘thanks for coming!’. This year we have decided to swerve the sleepover and instead we will be chauffeuring my son and his mates to a laser tag day, hopefully vomit free.

I am so pleased that my eldest son still believes in Father Christmas as he came home from school a little sad last week. When I asked what was wrong, he explained that his friend had told him how ‘Santa isn’t real, it’s just your Mum and Dad getting the presents’. I did my best Uncle Albert style shocked reaction, assuring him that ‘your friend is wrong, how could I possibly afford all of the presents you and your brother and sister get?’. I do still wonder at that question myself actually. After much persuasion and some excellent fake Santa spotting clips on YouTube, he came back round to the idea that Father Christmas is real. However, it brings home the reality that this year could be the last year. That next year he won’t want to meet with the beardy man in the red suit at the garden centre and I will have to massively bribe him to not tell his siblings. I hope he still believes next year but just in case I will have to make as many mental pictures of his excitement in the next couple of weeks. And I will definitely have to up my game, ready for the onslaught of inquiring questions. When he was on page 2 of his Christmas wish list yesterday I pointed out that ‘Father Christmas won’t be able to give you everything on the list’. He said ‘It’s OK Mum, the elves make them so it doesn’t matter how much it costs’. I replied, ‘Well they might still have to buy parts’. He just smiled at me and carried on filling the space on the page. Actuallly, perhaps he does know….