TRADITIONS
As a mom, you create traditions when you start a family. At times, especially during the busy holiday season, it seems like sticking to these traditions year after year is more of a chore (especially as your kids get older and don’t necessarily want to participate in said traditions).
I didn’t realize until Hutton started chemo just how different this holiday season would look, and honestly, the last thing on my mind was keeping up with our holiday traditions. This year was just going to be different.
A lot of our holiday traditions are with Kiki and her family. Kiki (Kim but Hutton calls her Kiki), is my best friend of 25+ years. She is mom to Bryson (10), and Grey (6). Bryson and Hutton are 6 months apart in age and have practically been raised together, so all of our traditions have both Bryson and Hutton together (then Grey 4 years later). We were ok with our holiday season looking a little different this year, but in true Hutton fashion she was not going to be ok with that and there are certain traditions she wants to keep. We know that we have to do things around her chemo schedule and how she is feeling, as she gets really overwhelmed, overstimulated, and tired easily due to the chemo.
Well, It just so happened that “Merry Kiss Me” at Dana Point Harbor started on a chemo “off” week and Hutton was in good spirits, so in the middle of November we put on our Christmas shirts and hats and we upheld our Merry Kiss Me tradition, just like every other year. Did it look a little different this year? Yes, yes, it did. But we make it work! That is a box checked off the Christmas traditions list!
We have let Hutton lead the way and tell us which traditions she would like to try and keep this year. The few she would like to still uphold are - her Gingerbread Party and our annual Christmas Eve Eve sleepover at Kikis house. There are also some she would like to skip, like visiting Santa, which luckily we were going to have to do anyway due to her compromised immune system. Which brings us to what we have been struggling with these first few months of her treatments…how do we try and give her a semi-normal life, allow her to see her friends and how much they love and support her, all while keeping her as healthy and safe as possible so she doesn’t end up in the ER or even worse ICU…because an, “Oh its just a little sniffle” for everyone else could mean disaster for her.
With that said, we are going to try our darnedest to make it happen, starting with her Christmas Traditions. We are praying that her chemo schedule will not play a factor this holiday, that she will stay healthy with no unexpected trip to the ER, and that allow her to still be able to experience as normal of a Christmas that she can, keeping her compromised immune system, and not being able to be around anyone who is sick or even has been sick it in the past couple weeks. It will be a challenge but we are determined to make it happen!
