Traditions with new baby
With Easter coming up, I’ve been thinking about holiday traditions. My BF and I have 50/50 custody of his daughter, age 5. We’ve been living together for almost two years, so we’ve done a fair number of holidays together and I’ve generally defaulted to the ways of celebrating that BF did growing up and therefore they did when BF and BM did with his daughter when they were together. Reluctantly defaulted in some cases, but I can understand the importance of continuity for the kid and certainly don’t want to squash my BF’s family traditions as they are of equal value to my own. However, we now have a baby together. And while this year (and probably next year) aren’t super important because the baby can’t actively participate or understand, at some point it’s going to become an issue. I want to raise my baby with my family traditions blended in. And while some things can be compromised, like instead of actively perpetuating Santa (his family) or generally relegating Santa to books and movies (my family) we can just ease up, especially since his daughter is getting older anyway. But other things (which seem trivial so it makes it hard that I care) can’t be so easily compromised, like hiding fake candy filled eggs for Easter (his family) versus hiding the hard boiled eggs we painted (my family). It seems hard to change things for his daughter but does that really mean I can’t raise my child with my traditions? Do I need to default to the way my BF celebrated with his ex? It feels icky thinking of the hypothetical conversation where I tell my daughter that we do a certain thing for a certain holiday because that’s the way daddy’s ex-wife did things. Any advice?
Why can't you do both, paint
Why can't you do both, paint the eggs and hide both types?
Just using Easter Eggs as an
Just using Easter Eggs as an example- One thing you can do to blend it all together is do the colored hard boiled eggs (my family does them too!) for the early morning wake up egg hunt. Do a big yard egg hunt with plastic eggs before or after Easter Dinner with the whole family.
Christmas is one where you really have to figure out how you want your home to celebrate. Once you have kids it gets really stressful to have to run around to people's houses, take the kids away from their toys, please everyone under the sun... Since your baby is so little, put your foot down this year on how you are going to celebrate. If that means people come to you- so be it. If that means that you do Christmas Eve with one side of family and Christmas day with the other- great. If you do Christmas Eve with family and Christmas day at home with just you guys- that is great too! -- The point is, dig your heels in now while your little is little and don't give in! I waited FAR too long to do that and it caused a huge fight in my family. However, once the dust settled, my mother even said that my way was very nice and said she is fine with it now.
I think if you *add* things,
I think if you *add* things, such as hiding colored hard boiled eggs as well as candy-filled plastic eggs, SD has little room to complain and will in fact think the new traditions are fun. My family does Christmas stockings on December 6, for St. Nicholas day; SO's family does stockings on Christmas day. I can assure you that the SDs don't mind getting two stockings, one on December 6 and another on the 25th. Where you run into a tougher issue is where there's a philosophical difference such as the role of Santa Clause, and that just needs to be talked out. We haven't run into any of those, fortunately.
Another thing that helps for us is the split of holidays. The SDs are already used to having different holiday traditions because BM and SO don't do things exactly the same, so there's already a difference in holiday celebrations depending on whether it's BM's year or SO's year. Since the SDs have already adapted to this, throwing some of my family's traditions into the mix doesn't bother them.
hiding hand painted eggs? Nah
hiding hand painted eggs? Nah, why not blow the eggs and use them for decorations inside the house. The crafty bit is the fun part and who cares if you lose a plastic egg?
Adding things and not taking away is the way to go.
I agree with ndc that since kids are used to doing things in different houses they take it in their stride. This year was our first Christmas with kids and our last Christmas with no teens. Next time we have Christmas with the kids we'll have two and my BS is already turning moody and he's not yet 12. Good times. So this year was a really big deal. And it was lovely.