Today’s 25 days of Christmas activity was a fun one for the lils, having a peppermint bubble bath, with an added twist of green water!!  I use food colouring to dye the water near most special occasions (red for Valentines and Canada Day, green for St. Patrick’s day, pastels for Easter, black or orange for Hallowe’en…).  It is a big hit with Woo and Goose, and really easy to do.  The water doesn’t stain the skin, as you only use a smidge of food colouring.  You might have to clean the tub after, but that is why I planned this one for the day before our cleaner comes!

We had a crazy late start to dinner, so were somewhat disorganized in general.  Woo then had an accident and needed an early start to bath, but Goose was a pokey eater and very late to the party. In all the hubbub and confusion, I forgot to put the dye in the water, and never even mentioned to Willy about the bubbles.  We all carried on in oblivion, until it was time to go to bed.

Woo goes to bed a few minutes after Goose, so he and I headed down to the playroom to tidy, while Willy and Goose went for her stories.  We were cleaning up the books, when Woo spotted the Grinch, and asked if I could read it to him at bedtime.  A little ding went off in my head, and I realized what had happened.  We’d forgotten.  I panicked, but tried not to show it.  The last thing that I wanted was an upset Woo at bedtime.

A million contingencies went through my head, and the best that I could come up with was that Woo would get the story tonight, and that would be our activity.  It’s planned for next week, but I needed something!  I also felt badly that it was cheating Goose, but figured that she was in bed by this point.  She is really fast to go down most nights, and once in bed, we try not to disturb her.  A break in her personal wind down routine (and it is a routine!) usually means chaos for a while before she passes out.  We’d make it up to her in another activity.

As we headed upstairs I heard Willy finishing up with her story, meaning that we could involve her, even if it pushed her bedtime later.  This solved the problem!  Then I looked up and saw the mistletoe. The mistletoe was my holdback activity for exactly this scenario, my back-up plan for the night when nothing went to plan.  I ran to her bedroom and dragged them all to the hallway where we exchanged kisses under the mistletoe.  It was perfect.