Happy Holidays

Jack's had a great 3rd Christmas. A Christmas which involved 3 separate "Christmases", to boot! Can't go wrong there! This year was our year to stay home for Christmas Eve and Day. Poor Nat was sick on Christmas Eve so Jack and I headed off without him to the children's service at West Shore with Gram and Bec. Then, a lovely C.E. supper and "first gift" opening. It worked well to go to the early service: Jack was home in time for bed and Nat and I had time to sit and enjoy our candlelit living room with presents under the tree. My favorite moment of the year. Sigh. We were actually pretty on-track this year with our shopping and wrapping, done well before Christmas Eve, but thanks to our present-obsessed little boy nothing went out under the tree beforehand. It was sad to not have a continuous display of presents-- but it was also very dramatic to go from a bare tree skirt to what you see above. As I sat there and looked at the display of consumer gluttony before me, I realized we were setting ourselves up for one very overstimulated boy the next morning!!

While that was certainly the case, Jack was pretty much angelic for Christmas morning. And, he appeared to enjoy himself tremendously. We started off the morning with just our little family, opening our stockings together. I think Corydon was among the most excited (if you don't count mommy who woke up at 5am unable to sleep any longer because it was CHRISTMAS!!) as she immediately threw her head back and sang when her stocking was placed by her on the couch. The smell of rawhide gently drifting out may have been part of it...
Jack enjoyed opening his own presents as well as helping us with ours. He was pretty focused on each individual gift, playing with them for a bit before being ready to move on. If only we could all be so deliberate.

Gram and Becca came over for tree presents and brunch. As always we overdid it with presents, and were pretty exhausted by the end of 2 hours of opening (brunch break in the middle to allow the boy to decompress a bit..) But it was great fun. I think the high point for Jack was passing out the present, even more than opening them. It was adorable, as he walked around the room with packages, some bigger than he was, saying "this one for daddy! this one for mommy!"