Hello everyone!
I hope you had a good time during the end of year. For us it was the longest stretch of relaxed time spent together as the whole family in a long time and much needed. I am working self employed in retail, and I used to work pretty much up to the 24th and opened again on 2nd January. Plus I usually got some work in between, like doing an inventory and things like that.
For us a hard year (related to medical problems and lack of support, and many forms to file...) was coming to an end, and we desperately needed downtime. And so my husband and I both decided to take almost 3 weeks off this year, and neither of us did anything work-related at all during that time. We also decided for the first time not to go visit our parents, and instead just curled up at home.
The twins (both with cerebral palsy and the odd additional thing thrown in here and there, all leftovers from pre-maturity) needed some time to get used to the much less structured day compared to school, but after a few days seemed to enjoy the amount of time they had with each other (and their computer). One of them suffers from anxieties and was very happy to mostly stay indoors, and play boardgames with us, read and do stuff inside. I went on walks with the other when home seemed to get too narrow and we needed some exercise. Some of them with a torch as it was getting dark so early which was exciting. And we were both surprised how much we enjoyed those walks. - He normally uses a wheelchair when out and about, but with a less strenuous day, he enjoyed the exercise he got from walking.
So we had a really good time.
This morning, however, we are also happy that it is back to normal. And looking back, I feel bad about other things about these holidays than I thought I would.
School holidays always are hard work for me. Because I can't just not work, I run my shop on a low flame, and try to get everything that's super urgent done in a fraction of the time. At the same time there's meals to cook, physio schedules to watch over, OT exercises to do, and holiday homework to enforce. Usually, our holidays are about as structured as school days are, with time in standing frames, passive and active physio scheduled in, toiletting and medication in between... you probably all know the drill.
This time, I just couldn't do it. I entered the holidays utterly exhausted. We decided on minimal cooking and long down-times for all of us. And I was looking forward to Christmas with a rather bad conscience: My mum used to cook a lot and really well during these days, and it made me feel sad and bad that I wouldn't be carrying on the various food-related traditions. Looking back now, I don't think it was a loss. The time spent together was worth much more than me standing in the kitchen for long hours while feeling ill.
However, we also didn't get any physio done, and while we just shrugged it off during the holidays, now the bad conscience is coming back with a vengence. - We really should have kept those kids more active, especially the curl-up-at-homer. I hope it won't have done any damage.
How do and did the holidays work for you guys?
