The Christmas Season has always been one of my favourite times of year. I love the warmth, the music, the smells, the food and eggnog, the sparkling lights, the gifts and time with friends and family.
I have also always loved winter and all of the outdoor activities we have access to in Ontario. When there is snow, we love to ski and toboggan and we also love to skate... with or without snow!!
Christmas and Wintertime have become my most challenging time of year since Tatum joined our family... mostly emotionally challenging. We still enjoy all of the things that I've always loved about Christmas but gift giving for Tatum is really tough. I wrack my brain trying to think of that perfect gift for her - she deserves the world in our minds. What will bring her joy? Is there something that we could play with together? What would be fun for her and also good for her development? The choices available are many but as well as I know our awesome little girl, she is so tough to chose a gift for. My heart sinks as I'm walking through a toy store and a sales rep asks me if they can help me find what I'm looking for. Inevitably, they just don't understand what Tatum would love. Sigh. I suppose the reality is simple, she doesn't need much to be happy. She needs her family, her friends, her pal 'puppy', a good night's sleep, food and a good string of beads.
We all love watching each other open the gifts we've chosen or created for each other. We only ever open one gift at a time so that we can appreciate the gift we are receiving or admire the gift someone else is receiving. This Christmas morning, we took so much time enjoying our gifts that we still weren't done opening them at the end of the day. Many of the gifts that were left to be opened were Tatum's - she wasn't in the mood to open them so we waited until she was ready.
It was very obvious this Christmas morning that Tatum was very pleased with a couple of items from Santa. She saw a coil necklace hanging out of her stocking and she reached in and grabbed it with determination! "I love it" was what I could imagine her saying. Santa also brought Tatum a sand and water table... she stands at it all by her self while splashing water and throwing sand everywhere.
Tatum wasn't interested in opening any of her gifts herself so her big sisters lovingly opened them for her. Some of the gifts chosen for her did not seem to be noticed at all. Instead of Tatum being excited about the gift she received and thanking us for it, we got excited for her and thanked the 'giver' of the gift. It's different. It's confusing to me that I have let go of my longing to hear Tatum say I love you (because I know she loves me), but I'm challenged in letting go of my longing to know she is excited about Christmas morning and all that it brings.
We clearly witnessed Tatum's obvious Christmas joy a few times over the break. The first was seeing her beaming smile as she crawled lightning fast to get as close as she could to Chris and his guitar as he played what seems to be her favourite holiday song; Jingle Bells. The second was at our Santa visit with all 3 girls. Unlike previous Santa visits, Tatum smiled the biggest smile when she saw Santa AND gave him a hug and pulled his beard! It was obvious that she knew exactly who the guy in the red suit was! To me, this was huge... this was such an appropriate reaction, my heart melted as did Riley and Peyton's. The third was our Christmas day turkey dinner. This year, all 5 of us ate Turkey, Potatoes, Gravy and Peas and loved it!! Tatum devoured our feast as did Riley, our meat-hater.... gravy apparently makes everything taste awesome.
My feelings of discontentment around the holidays are all about my expectations and my story of what Christmas 'should' be like. Working on accepting our new normal is an everyday job, it just gets heightened at traditional times like Christmas.
Wintertime in general brings a set of challenges that are pretty diverse. Tatum has poor circulation as a result of her low muscle tone, low activity level and her brain injury. As a family, we don't care if it's 40 below, we will find a way to have fun outdoors.
We are a skiing, skating, tobogganing and occasionally snow show/cross country ski family.
One of our biggest challenges is how do we keep Tatum warm enough for long enough for her to enjoy and endure our activity and still make it easy for her to move!? Once we get all the gear on her, she looks like a giant sausage and kind of rolls around like one too!
Our hope is to get Tatum skiing with us next winter. The problem is that Blue Mountain does not offer a special needs skiing program at this point, and that is where we like to ski. It is my intention to get in touch with Intrawest, Track III and CAD ski to see if I can help bring a special needs ski program to Blue... it's been on the 'to do list' for a while but I will get to it soon for Tatum and our gang... Mamma's ready to take a stand. For now, starting this weekend we will divide and conquer. Chris will ski for a bit while I watch Tatum at the chalet, then we will switch it up so that I can get out for a ski too. One day very soon, all 5 of us will ski together... look out!!
Tobogganing is so fun but even for the strongest little bodies, it's pretty dangerous. Up until last year, we made Riley and Peyton wear helmets on the hill. They are now 'too old' (read 'too cool') to wear helmets so I stand at the top of hill watching them go down and walk back up with my breath held. To put Tatum on a sled with her sisters and send her down the hill seems like one of the most idiotic things I could do... not to mention the fact that she wouldn't likely be able to keep herself sitting the whole way down.
Skating as a family is one of the activities that we can all do together. Obviously, Tatum is not skating on her own at this point but we do get out to the rink quite often and we all love it. Chris, the girls and I all slap on our skates and we take turns pushing Tatum in her adapted stroller. The thorn in my side is that every single time we get on the rink, we are told to take our stroller off the rink - that it is not allowed. This means that every single time we go out as a family to skate, we have to explain in front of Tatum and our other kids that Tatum has special needs and cannot skate on her own. It happens at our local rinks and even happened at Nathan Phillips Square when Mayor John Tory was out greeting the skaters! We have to justify Tatum's right to enjoy a skating excursion with her family and remind her that she is different from the rest of us. I hate that this happens. The fact is, wheelchairs and adapted strollers
are allowed on the ice. Strollers are not for whatever reason. We've contacted our City Counsellor and requested that a notice be put up at the rinks we frequent but no one seems to appreciate how an ignorant request to take our adapted stroller off the ice, steals a bit of joy and normalcy from our family outing. I feel obliged to take a stand on this but I'm not sure where to start. A new friend from Beverley School is helping us draft a letter and I may just call one of our local news stations to see if anyone wants to hear our story and help families like ours avoid this confrontation on the rink.
I think most of my posts are pretty upbeat - sorry to be a downer here! This is all part of my journey to find a way to enjoy winter and Christmas whole heartedly, without worry and undue stress in our 'new normal' family.
All this said, 2015 was a pretty great year for all of us. I have a very strong suspicion that 2016 is going to be the best year of our lives... so far!
Happy New Year to everyone!
