Historically, the Hus-b and I have not been prompt and timely people. Guests coming over for dinner? We’re invariably still in aprons when they arrive. Your birthday is coming up? We’re certain to remember…sometime the following week. We have thrown Christmas trees out in March, packed for a three-week honeymoon hours before our flight, and aways seem to miscalculate how long it takes to drive someplace by approximately 17 minutes. We have the best of intentions but our time management skills leave, ahem, something to be desired.
Enter the Little Lady, and while we still scramble from time to time, we’re suddenly doing things on time and even (gasp) early. Hence the truly peculiar nature of the above photo, our Christmas tree fully decked and surrounded by wrapped (!) presents. It’s December 16, people, which in Fusco-time usually means that we have several days before shipping costs get hideously expensive and are still discussing which bottles of wine to open while trimming our tree.
So how did this happen exactly? Fear. Abject, inescapable fear. A baby makes completing even the simplest of tasks take approximately eight million times longer than they did pre-kid, so any lack of timeliness is dramatically magnified. There is no “skin of your teeth” with a kid; without advance planning, stuff simply does. Not. Happen. Add in the pressure of your child’s first Christmas and even the most hardened of procrastinators will start shopping in months not ending in -ember.
While we’ll never change our stripes entirely (we’ve been frantically harassing Neiman Marcus about the ETA of the Little Lady’s stocking we ordered a tad late for personalization), we must admit that being early birds feels pretty great. The Hus-b and I have spent an obnoxious amount of time sitting in the library admiring our handiwork, and we congratulate one another daily on, at long last, having our shit together.
