Christmas 2007

Ahh--I am currently enjoying one of my Christmas presents from this year. AJ's sister E gave me a set of 800 thread count sheets. I am sitting in my bed, in the lap of luxury. I definitely don't want the kids to touch them with their grubby hands, and even felt a little twinge of initial reluctance to let AJ share them.

Christmas was great this year. T didn't wake up until 7:45 and MJ around 8, so it wasn't too early. The kids were so excited and fun, but they really didn't go crazy with presents. We enjoyed a relatively calm morning being together, eating breakfast, and spreading out the presents over the morning.

Fun things from Christmas:

MJ was so concerned about how her good behavior weighed against her bad behavior for the year. "Santa thinks we were really good this year. We must have been really good this year." She seemed to think that they didn't deserve the presents they had gotten. Later she said, "I just keep thinking about all the bad things I did this year." And the next day she talked to me about it again--"why did Santa bring me all those presents when I was bad?" I felt a little bad myself that she was feeling so much guilt. I tried to talk to her about how we all do things that aren't right and then we try to do better. I think that a lie she told a lunch room aide "I am allergic to peanuts" was weighing especially heavy on her mind. It happened recently and kind of ballooned for her as we tried to figure out what actual events transpired and what the cause of the lie was.

Another thing she said. "I didn't even send my note. Santa always picks out just the perfect presents. He knows just the things that we like to do!"

T is really into singing Rudolph this season. My favorite part of his song is "Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say (Yo ho ho),..." A kind of quasi-pirate Santa. Last year, he would gruffly say, "Yo, ho ho! What do you want for Christmas?" And if we didn't answer, he would say, "I SAID, YO HO HO! What do you want for Christmas??" I'm glad that the Yo ho ho carried over to this year.

Both MJ and T got scooters and helmets for Christmas. MJ's is going to take her some time to learn to ride it since it has just two wheels. But, T's has two back wheels and he has been riding it around the house non-stop. Towards the middle of Christmas day, he started taking his scooter everywhere--downstairs to watch a movie and then later, up to his room when he went to bed. He parked it in the doorway of his bedroom when he got into bed, with his helmet hanging off the handlebars. A little bit later, he told AJ that he needed to go the bathroom, and AJ said ok. So, he jumped out of bed, ran over to his scooter, grabbed his helmet to put it on, fumbling with the chin strap, and then scooted over to the bathroom (5 feet from his doorway). Then he parked his scooter in the bathroom doorway and took off his helmet, carefully hanging it on the handlebars. When he was done in the bathroom, he ran back over to the scooter and began to repeat the whole process until AJ told him to get into bed.

He also had a great time dressing up and playing with the awesome cape that Grandma made. It's two sided-one side red and one black so that he can alternate between good and bad roles. When he has the black side out (almost always), it has the look of a magician or a vampire. When he opened it, he swished the new cape from Grandma on and off his shoulders saying "I can fly with this outside in the wind". He got some other dress up accessories. His favorite outfit was to put the neo-prene Batman mask and black cape on, and then use the new foam sword and shield set he got. He has found us a lot more willing to play fight now that he is using foam sword and shield rather than his wood one and now that we have a means of defense: happily, the set came with two swords and two shields so that he can play with another person.

And a blast from the past: when T opened his fleece blanket from Aunt E with his name on it, he said, "I can't bee-lieve it!" This is exactly what MJ said when she opened a princess quilt for her third birthday.