the perfect stocking

I started writing the following post about three years ago. I never finished it, and I can't remember why. It could have been a factor of time, or just forgetting, or just plain laziness. It could have been that after I wrote so much about such a trivial topic that I felt silly finishing it and posting it for fear of being made fun of.

I was reminded of this post today, because I'm finding myself in a similar--yet less dramatic--predicament now. Reading through my words written as a first-time mom during the holidays, I still find this post lighthearted and comical, which was the intended purpose of it all along. I think it's time to share this silly story from 2013 so I can come full circle with how to face this repeating quandary this year.

Being a new mom, there is honestly very little that I obsess over regarding Simon. I won't buy something just because it is 'trendy,' it's not important to me that he has all the toys in the world, and not everything about my parenting style is exactly mainstream. But, as a lover of everything spirited and celebratory, there is one thing that I have been freaking out about getting just right as the Christmas holiday quickly approaches:

The Perfect Stocking.

What's perfect, you ask? Well, to me, 'perfect' would've been me being smarter three years ago and purchasing this entire set of carnival character stockings sold at JCPenney rather than only two for Eric and myself (his is the penguin, mine is the snowman) so that we'd had a matching set for our future children. These stockings are no longer available, so our family won't have matching stockings due to my lack of thinking. Is this a huge deal? No, it's really not, and I've since let it go. But, Simon still needed a stocking, so my new hunt began.

As with many things, the search for Simon's Christmas stocking was superseded by the millions of other more important tasks that take up my day; like work, and laundry, and breathing, and CARING FOR MY SON. Eric and I were able to hit up a few stores on Black Friday, but nothing I saw seemed special enough or fit in with the style of our stockings. Jen suggested getting a "Baby's First Christmas" stocking for just this year if I couldn't find anything I liked, which was a plan I was keeping in my back pocket. But still, I didn't want a stocking that wasn't personalized for Simon's first Christmas. I didn't want to give up on finding something while there was still time.

Eric probably thought I was making a bigger deal out of this whole stocking thing than I needed to, and maybe I'd built it up in my mind to be this huge, important thing that really isn't what Christmas is all about. And now that I think about it, I am probably sounding a little materialistic. But I promise, materialism isn't what it's about at all.

My favorite thing about the holidays is traditions. We don't have many holiday traditions in my family; as a kid, the holidays were great when it was my mom, dad, and me, but we didn't always do the same thing. I think I was kind of older when I started opening a gift on Christmas Eve, but we didn't really have any other traditions put in place. Then after my mom passed, my dad and I had small, nice Christmases together, but still we celebrated differently year to year. Eric and I have begun some holiday traditions in the years since we've been together, and we are still in the process of starting new ones as a family. I decided that I wanted Simon to have the same stocking for every Christmas, starting with his first one. This stocking would be the stocking that would be hung in our home every year, for every Christmas, through his childhood and into adulthood. And from 10 months to 10 years to when he's in his 40s, I will stuff his stocking with holiday goodies when he is home for the holidays. I will do this for all of the children we will have, and they WILL always have to come home for Christmas, because Mom might have stuffed the stockings with cash this year.

That's my dream, and I promise myself to begin and continue this tradition for as long as I am living.  But, the tradition cannot begin without a stocking, and on the inside I was kind of starting to freak out about finding one in time for Christmas.

It was getting dangerously close to C-day, but with little hope that I'd find something I'd love in a store I decided to do another Internet search (I'd done several before Thanksgiving with no luck). If one matching our set was no longer an option, the next best thing an even better stocking for Simon would be one with an owl. For some magical reason, I finally found THE STOCKING. I knew it was it from the moment I saw it, and it was just perfect in every way for my son. I began to imagine his future Christmases with it, eager to find what treasures Santa Claus left inside. And then, my heart dropped when I saw three little words of doom on the website:

No Longer Available.

This is when I pulled my chin up off the floor and typed eBay's site address as quickly as possible. To my surprise, I found a listing for an auction that would end in just over 24 hours. Don't tell Eric, but I probably would've been willing to pay an ungodly amount of money (that we don't have) to win the auction, but I told myself that I'd have to let it go if the highest bid exceeded another $10 before the end of the auction. I set an alarm on my phone and checked back the next day just 15 minutes before the auction was set to close, and the bid had not changed! It was like it was meant to be, as I waited until one minute was left in the auction to place my $1 bid increase to make it mine. I'm typically more of a 'Buy It Now' kind of girl, but there was something so satisfying in winning that auction. I felt badass. And excited!

So that's a far as I got with my silly story. In a nutshell, the stocking came, I figured out my own way to personalize it with Simon's name, and Christmas was saved. We've used it in the years since, and it's served its purpose perfectly. Yes, he loves that there are owls on it, but he would love it regardless of how it looks because it's his Christmas stocking, and what kid doesn't love their Christmas stocking? I'm laughing at myself now, but I think it was completely normal of me to worry about trying to make my first baby's first Christmas 'perfect.' I'm human and I love him, and that's about as much as I'm guilty of.

here's how it turned out, by the way

But now... I've got another child on the way, and he needs a stocking, too. So, what do I do here? Bend over backwards do a simple Google search to find a stocking with a penguin on it, or order another stocking like Simon's so the two match? I've already gotten over the fact that Simon's doesn't go with Eric's and my stockings, but could my OCD really handle a third eyesore on our mantle? (Totally kidding there!)

Here are my options:

penguins, not matching Simon's

polar bears, matching Simon's

I do know that it's totally not that big of a deal whether Wesley's stocking has penguins on it or not. He's the second kid, so we don't care about getting it as right as we did the first time, right? NO. But, I'm human and I love him, and I want to be just as guilty about that, too. He will have the perfect stocking, too, simply because it will be his.