The Wind Down

Well, we’ve finally hit that point in December, when the entertainment industry starts to wind down for the Holiday season, and lemme tell you, I could not be more grateful for it. It feels like I’ve been going non-stop since February, with filming and parenting, and so it’s so nice to know that there’s a couple week period where I can rest and take stock of what this year has been all about, and recoup enough to tackle the craziness of next year. In my job, I usually, mostly know what my next year is looking like, a few months in advance, and it’s set to be my busiest yet. So, I'm so glad I can decompress before that.

Did I tell you what my plans are for the holidays? Well, here goes, just in case. My whole family, 17 of them, including my mum, siblings, their partners and their kids, are all coming to stay for a week. None of them have ever been to the US before, and we’ve never taken a vacation as a whole family before, so this will be epic. Half will be staying in my home, the other half in a hotel close by. It has been so stressful to arrange, because of all the changing rules and policies around covid, but we’re now just 10 days away from their arrival and I'm praying it all goes smoothly and they can get here.

It’s not just that I want to hang with my family. It’s that they’ll all get to meet my son, Ismail, for the first time. I'm really close with my family, so for them to not have met him yet is tough for all of us. When one of us has a baby, we shower that baby with love, and we all help with the first few months of raising that baby, so that it’s a little easier on the parents. I can’t wait for a week of my family being able to hold him and love on him. Ismail is now 5 months old, and getting much more active and likes constant interaction and entertaining, when he’s awake, so it’ll be nice to have my siblings keep him entertained for the week.

I think they’ll all love it here so much that they won’t want to return to rainy England. That’s how I felt when I first came here 17 years ago, and then 3 years later, I made it my permanent home.

Ismail has finally turned a corner. We had some incredibly hard weeks, with him not eating or sleeping well, and the past week or two he’s been eating better and sleeping so well. I hope it continues, but I'm hyper-aware of the fact that they switch things up every few weeks, which really keeps you on ya toes. But, we have a much happier, playful baby right now, and it makes me so happy to see him happy.

This will be his first Christmas. Even though I'm muslim, I love the joy of Christmas, and I was always so jealous of the kids that celebrated it, when I was a kid. So, we have a tree every year now, and I can’t wait to create some holiday traditions for our boy. We didn’t get him any gifts. We’re not really big gift givers, Rob and I, with each other. We do regular acts of kindness for each other, which we much prefer. Also, Ismail is too young to care about gifts. As he gets closer to 3-4, we’ll do small gifts, but even then, we’re determined not to spoil him. Just 2-3 reasonable gifts and then great food and baked treats to enjoy as a family. I can hardly wait.

I wanna know some of your favorite traditions with your families. What were they? I might need ideas that I can incorporate, over the coming years.

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