Dear Self,

Hey! Remember tonight?
Tonight was great.

Remember how you and the hubs decided to sit on the floor in Tennyson's room and read some books to him, and play some puzzles with him, and push trucks around the room with him,and just spend some quality time with him before putting him in bed for the night? Yeah, that was awesome.

Then, remember how Jordan wandered in and sat down and started playing with the puzzles too, and telling us about her busy schedule the next day, and then Kort wandered in and jumped on the hubs' back, and the hubs flipped him to the ground and started wresting with him, and then Tens thought that Kort was getting hurt so he started bawling, so then Kort laughed really loud so that Tens wouldn't worry or be sad, and then Tens started laughing this like, really huge, fake laugh, and then that made the rest of us laugh for reals, which made Tens fake-laugh even harder, which, in turn, made us laugh even harder?

Yeah, that was awesome too.

And then, remember how you all sat around laughing and talking and enjoying time together? And remember how you didn't snap at Kort to "Be quiet!" or "Knock it off!"? And remember how Tennyson just wandered from one person to the next doling out squishy-wet kisses, and then applauding himself for being oh so generous/fantastic? Yeah.

Good times.

But do remember last week when you "decided" that it was "special family time" so you called everyone into the living room and told them it was special family time, and that you were all going to do special family stuff together...right now?

And do you remember how you had all of these weird and rigid expectations like:
1. Your A.D.D-ridden 8 year old would sit quietly and respectfully and not say/do anything annoying.
2.Your one year old would play happily on his own and not fuss and whine and squawk at you when you refuse to let him him rip the Christmas book out of your hands.
3. Your one year old would not try unceasingly to pull the Christmas tree down on himself for the hundredth time.
4. Your one year old wouldn't rip paper poinsettias off of the tree, eat them, spit them out, and then proceed to try to feed them to the dogs.
5. Your 8 year old would not {under any circumstances} go switch the ipod playlist from "Christmas music" to the Kid's Bop versions of "Tonight, Tonight" and/or Bruno Mars' "The Lazy Song" and start breakdancing in the middle of the room.

{By the by, on a scale of one to ten, exactly how evil am I for regularly plotting the death of Bruno Mars?}

and finally, that brings us to rigid expectation #6:

6. Everything would go as planned and everyone would have a simply fantastic time and you would make happy, wonderful memories together. Memories that your children would look back upon with great fondness and love someday in the not too distant future...?

Remember that?
Yeah, that kind of sucked.
Expectations have a funny way of ruining...well, everything.

Now, I'm not saying you need to LOWER your expectations...per se,
but mayhaps we could explore the possibility of simply not having them at all...sometimes...yes?

Yes, lets.

I think we'll call it "Zero Expectation Family Time." No rules, no plans, no schedule, no expectations, no set days. even if only for 15 minutes. Just a suggestion.

Xo,
You