My Christmas list

It’s the time of year when Christmas engulfs you. Decorations have been up in stores since Halloween, sale ads and catalogs have been bombarding your social media and email inbox, and festive music has been slowly creeping onto your radio stations.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Christmas. Nostalgic holiday movies, classic Christmas songs, scrumptious cut-out cookies and fun wrapped presents are all cheerful things that make the month of December enjoyable.

But, as an adult, Christmas kind of loses its magic. Things don’t just happen; you have to make them happen. I think one of the greatest Christmas fun-killers is the Christmas list responsibility. As an adult with kids, this is an exhausting question. It’s the mental load of coming up with gifts that you, your spouse and your kids want or need, balanced with dividing ideas out amongst family so everyone gets equal monetary or numerical amounts of presents. Oofda.

Honestly, as an adult who can buy myself things when I want or need the — and who is easily overstimulated by too much clutter — my Christmas list gets harder and harder every year. As a type-A, introvert mom, here is what I’d love to put on my Christmas list:

— Mental load button: The ability to offload all the to-dos and worries that are constantly in my brain at the flick of a switch, knowing, of course, that things will still get done.

— Uninterrupted sleep: To be able to close my eyes and fall asleep within minutes, then know that no child, sickness, full moon sorcery or hormone shift will wake me. Just a solid night of restorative sleep — heavenly.

— On-call chef: I don’t mind cooking, but no one warned me how exhausting it would be to come up with and execute meal options every day of my life. There are nights when I just can’t fathom the creativity, effort or forethought that goes into making a meal. I would love to hit a tap-out button at any hour of the day and have a chef take over to make a healthy meal that everyone will gladly eat.

— Live-in chiropractor and masseuse: I’m sadly aware of my older age over the last few years. I can now be completely debilitated by a sneeze or from wearing the wrong pair of shoes for too long. The number of back adjustments and shoulder rubs I need to feel like a human is increasing at an exponential rate. Having a live-in chiropractor and massage artist would solve a lot of problems in my life.

— A day of complete silence: No one asking me questions, and no annoying background sounds. My cortisol levels would be thankful.

— Sickness shield: Instead of having one kid bring home an illness, which then spreads slowly through everyone else in the house, making the entire spurt last what feels like a month, I want some kind of magic shield my family can wear that repels all germs.

— Self-cleaning outerwear. I’m not a fan of having multiple coats or boots for my kids, especially when they outgrow things so fast. So, most of the time, they wear the same outerwear to the farm that they wear to school. I would love for these things to clean themselves every night; another chore off my list, and no worries of accidentally carrying any unwanted odors or farm remnants out in public.

If anyone knows where to get these items, or if there is a killer Amazon deal on anything, please share your wisdom. I’m pretty sure I made the Nice List this year, so I’m hoping at least one of these things will be under the tree for me on Christmas morning.

Jill is a stay-at-home mom who helps part time on her family’s 140-cow dairy farm near Forest City, Minnesota. She and her husband, Aaron, have two children: Hayes and Nash.