Christmas 2009

The first Christmas with your own little family that you have created is such a precious thing!

Two days before Christmas, Santa came to visit Annalise and her triplet cousins who are one year older and visiting from out of town. We were all quite worried that much trauma and screaming times four would ensue. First each of the two boys sat on Santa's lap and they were cool as cucumbers. Their sister, on the other hand, was not even cool with watching her brothers suffer that apparent torture and so poor Emery was crying before she was even plopped down. One crier out of three was darn good though!

I would have bet my life savings that Annalise would sit on Santa's lap a maximum of 1.6 seconds before losing her mind with the horror of it. I mean, half the time she won't stand for perfectly nice children and loving family members. And that's when they just look at her.

I plopped her down and tried to look cheery. "Hi," said Santa, tucking her into his arm. My fake grin was plastered in a frozen twist on my face as I tried to nod encouragingly at the Boo. I held my breath.

Then. Boo-ie. Smiled. AND PROCEEDED NEVER ONCE TO CHECK TO SEE WHO WAS HOLDING HER. For five straight minutes a paparazzi of what seemed like several thousand were snapping away, millions of flashes exploding in front of her with much charmed triumphant squealing (um... possibly from me) and Boodily Oodily calmly peered at her legions of fans with interest. We kept waiting for her to look at Santa. Or cry. Or scream. Or do something. Instead she smiled a few times and cuddled in Santa's arms. Finally we took her away when it became evident that a Traumatizing Baby Explosion was not in the cards. As I was busily trying to make her smile, I took no pictures of my own. Boo.

Christmas was lovely, and the day started with Annalise learning to roll over for real, and performing her new stunt approximately 14,000 times with the fortitude and persistence of the Olympic athlete she'll clearly someday be.

Dave and I got a TV last month as our Christmas present to each other. So no surprises from each other on Christmas morning, but still a distinct upgrade from last year where we decided our presents would be each having a $100 shopping spree at the establishment of our choice and then we forgot and by the time I remembered in April Dave said the money was gone.

AND, I am proud to report, I actually did surprise Dave by going to Bob's Red Mill and buying him a bunch of whole wheat flours and bread and pancake mixes and their cookbook, since Everything That Store is Dave's heroin. If you remember, he wrote a whole blog post on it several months back, and watching him in there was no doubt similar to letting me loose in a scrapbook store, what with the drooling, sighing, and glassy-eyed racing around and around like a nut. But possibly minus the high-pitched monkey screeches.

I felt like a real mom stuffing Annalise's stocking Christmas Eve. Though, to be fair, a real mom probably would have had it together enough to actually send out birth announcements and Christmas cards the year her daughter was born. So in that sense I guess I'm still a fake, but if I HAD sent them out, this is what they'd have looked like.