The Season of Creating Memories

When my daughter remembers this holiday season, I don’t want her to remember that her mother was stressed out or tired. I want her to remember having fun decorating a Christmas tree, snuggling on the couch while reading holiday stories, and just having fun. This is a great time of the year for creating fantastic memories and relishing the company of others.

Trip: Aquarium

I took my daughter on an adventure that she absolutely loved. There’s an aquarium in Camden, New Jersey, a few hours from us.

During my daughter’s afternoon nap one afternoon, I drove us to a hotel not far from the aquarium. We splashed in the hotel pool, played on the pullout sofa, had a fun dinner in the hotel, and generally had a great time even just staying in the hotel. With little kids, these little experiences can be fantastic and fun without being overwhelming for the child or the parent.

The next morning, my daughter had a good deal of fun experiencing the pleasures of a hotel buffet breakfast, and then we drove to the aquarium. We spent almost three hours there, including time eating lunch.

My daughter loved the aquarium and the power of seeing what she wanted to, wandering from one exhibit to the next, doubling back, going somewhere else, etc. It was a bit dizzying sometimes, but I let her decide what to see. If I had demanded that we go in a straight line from A to Z, we both would have been unhappy by the end of the day, arguing and tugging against each other. We went several times to the shark touch station, the penguins, the hippos, and the octopus.

We even brought home a toy penguin that grows when submerged in water.

I didn’t think she was paying a lot of attention in some ways at the aquarium. At one tank, there was a turtle with fish cleaning its shell, so I described what was going on. She listened well enough to tell one of our friends about it several days later!

As small as this trip may have seemed to me, it meant a lot to my daughter. She started crying when she realized we were almost home and our adventure ‘over.’ That was really reassuring to me because it was in some ways it was difficult for me to tell if she was having much fun or just tolerating my taking her on a crazy trip. For days she enjoyed telling people about our adventure and all the things we did and saw. This warmed my heart so much. We’ve since discussed other adventures we might have in the future as a result of this one going so well.

If you’re able to take short trips like this, they can make for great bonding experiences.

Activity: Holiday Strands

This simple craft can grow each year by attaching the previous years’ to the end. I bought the following materials at a craft store:

[caption id=”attachment_77791" align=”alignright” width=”318"]

The strand came apart? Totally fixable! And next years strand can be attached just as easily.[/caption]

• Paper tents that I stretched out like a garland to keep growing (example item)
• Embellishments that focused on the season, Thanksgiving at the time. One benefit of buying embellishments is that they’re sticky, so you don’t have to use glue, avoiding a potential mess.

You can also choose free materials that can be found, although for these you’ll need to use glue or tape:

• Acorns
• Leaves or pine needles
• Sticks, especially with leaves or acorns still attached
• Pinecones pieces
• Candy from Halloween buckets or otherwise themed for the holiday or season

This craft can be tailored to any season. I tried this just after Thanksgiving, and I’ll likely try another one with my daughter closer to Christmas. While we may have a lot of Christmas decorations around this time of year, it’s harder to find decorations for some of the others that we still want to observe. Crafts like this make it easy to have children focus on the holiday at least for a few minutes.

Plus it’s easy. Yay for easy crafts.