christmas '20

Where to begin

I had planned on devoting the entire month of December to a Christmas-themed unit. I planned out 3-4 days per week of lessons, crafts, games and activities. So many nativity crafts and snowman games. Tons of Christmas books, both new and old. Counting ornaments on the tree, using candy canes as pointers, marshmallows for our ten frames. You name it, I thought of it, planned it, purchased it, and had it ready to go as soon as we took down our Thanksgiving classroom decor.

Basically, this is how I pictured the entire month of homeschooling :

Instead, this is how I spent most of December:

Long story short,

I spent the majority of December in absolute agony, with the sweet mercy of emergency oral surgery 10 days before Christmas.

Yup.

Christmas '20, amiright?

In a nutshell, I have a pleasantly large mouth (to match my pleasantly large head, har har har, I know), and so my wisdom teeth never needed to come out. They've been sitting happily in my mouth since they came in almost 2 decades ago. I've had one "not so good" wisdom tooth for the past year or so, that should come out when I have free time, to avoid any kind of emergency, you know the drill. Welp. The weekend after Thanksgiving my wisdom tooth basically broke in half - as in, like, half of the tooth cracked off and came out. I was surprisingly doing OK at that point, except for being super grossed out. Over the next several days, the tooth must've shifted to the point that it was pressing on a nerve - my trigeminal nerve - and that's when the pain began. At any given point during the day (or night, usually) I would get these shockwaves of searing pain coming from my tooth, over to my eye, up the side of my head, and across to my chin, that would last between 1-5 minutes, all but paralyzing me in the most horrendous pain I've ever felt (and I had three babies, 2 with failed epidurals, and a kidney stone). There is such a condition called Trigeminal Neuralgia, in which that nerve just flares up on its own, and it's commonly referred, in the medical world, as a suicide condition - because the pain is so intense it actually causes people to just kill themselves. Thank God it was just the tooth causing this mess.

I was basically laid up, going between one pain medication to another, biding my time, until I could finally get in with an oral surgeon who was able to fit me in right before Christmas to have the remains of the tooth (and its lower lever bunkmate) removed. Surgery gave me instant relief from the crazy pain, though the recovery was long and tough. Apparently when wisdom teeth are left in they can "root" deeper and stronger (blergh) and so, in just a couple words, it's been a long several weeks getting back to normal.

So, what did we do?

I will say, I spent an unreasonably amount of time feeling guilty for not being able to give them all the fun holiday lessons I had planned out. I kicked myself for not just sticking Conall in regular school, as he could've just been sent to school every day and everything would be done. BUT, after slapping myself out of my sadness, I decided that it is what it is.

My husband stepped up. My family stepped up. We made our regular holiday events and activities as educational as possible. And life went on. They still had a great month, and I was able to end the month of December eating solid food once again.

We also enjoyed a fancy shmancy dinner party, followed by a morning-after pajama and hot cocoa bomb party, with our COVID bubble friends, the Zilms. *There's nothing educational about either of these events, I just think the five of them are so stinking cute!

and really,

we just enjoyed our extra long Christmas break, our health, being able to celebrate with out family and COVID bubble friends, and time together in general. It's all good. Happy Holidays everyone!