Royal Traditions

Every family has their traditions. I’ve said it before, but I L-O-V-E traditions. I’m a creature of habit and I have this picture perfect idea of my girls sitting with their own kiddos talking about what a great childhood they had and how their mom created such fun, intentional traditions for them.

Then I wake up from that dream and come back to the reality that is my life.

My girls are not as big on traditions as I am. While I think it’s cool to have pancakes every Saturday morning, they prefer to run out and get donuts every so often. While I want to have the “What was the best/worst part of your day?” discussion every night at dinner, they “just don’t feel like talking about it right now!”

We have had one tradition that has stuck with us. Most Sunday nights, we eat our dinner in front of the TV. and watch Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Often, we have to watch America’s Funniest Home Videos (which I really just plain despise) since it’s on right before.

The girls have always loved this. They will take showers early, help clean the kitchen, make us pause it so they can run to the bathroom, etc.—all so they can watch it.

Last week, I was dismayed when they had no desire to watch it. None. Zilcho. Nada. They preferred to jump on the trampoline and didn’t even ask to rewind it when they came inside.

So I struggled. Do I insist on them keeping a tradition that they don’t care about—all so I could feel good about giving them consistency? Do I pretend that we never had a Sunday night tradition and move on?

As I was struggling in my mind with this, a commercial came on, telling me that Extreme Home Makeover was moving to Friday nights. What??? I guess the decision was taken out of my hands.

I hope that I would have chosen to be with my girls rather than insist on a tradition they had grown out of, but I can’t say I would have. Part of the hardest part of parenting for me is staying relevant, but yet consistent. And not trying to do things the way I think they SHOULD be (I’m really good at putting everything in a box and tying it up neatly—until you see how much tape it took to get it to look that way—and you can’t unwrap it because there’s so much of that darn tape).