Christmas update

Now that we've made it through Christmas and are starting to dig our way out from under the presents, wrapping paper, and junk food, I thought it  might be a good idea to update the blog. We had a great Christmas... but we somehow ended up with about three times as many presents for Perrin as we had intended to give him. Sigh. Score another point for the commercialization of Christmas. I just get so excited when I'm shopping for him and can't seem to help myself from buying just one more thing (then another thing, then another thing.) Anyway, at least we didn't go too crazy. It's not like we bought him a car or anything. Oh, wait...

In my defense, just look at that sweet face! How can anyone say no to that?

Christmas with a toddler

This is Perrin's second Christmas season, and I can already tell a big difference from last year. Last Christmas he was ten months old. He was crawling and babbling and starting to eat some table food. This year he's walking, talking, stealing my goodies when I'm not looking, and fully indulging in the many festivities of Christmas.

Last year, he wasn't terribly interested in our Christmas tree. This year, he broke three ornaments the first two days it was up. I did some clever re-arranging and decorated the bottom limbs mostly with cute plushy animals. Now Perrin can't break anything. (He does like to take my beloved giraffe ornament and pop its eyes out of socket, though.)

Last year, he barely understood the concept of opening presents. With some help, he was able to rip the paper off a few on Christmas day. This year, I have to keep a close eye on him because he keeps trying to unwrap presents (and has succeeded once... luckily it was a present for Trey and not for Perrin, so he wasn't incredibly impressed with what he found).

Last year, Perrin didn't do any fun Christmas activities other than being dragged along to a couple parties or to look at lights. This year, I already have two adorable ornaments that he made while at Mother's Day Out and some great pictures and memories of his first cookie-frosting adventure. (We stripped him down to just a diaper and gave him frosting and cookies and told him to "paint." He splotched some frosting on a few of the cookies, then realized the frosting tasted good. I had to take it away from him after he'd shoveled 4 or 5 spoonfuls into his mouth.)

Last year, he didn't understand much about why we celebrate Christmas. This year, he still doesn't. But he sure is having a blast playing with an interactive nativity set that tells the Christmas story through fun poems and miniature gift boxes that he gets to open. I was explaining to him one day that Mary and Joseph were married, so I made them kiss to illustrate the point. Now Perrin makes Mary smooch all over everyone. (According to Perrin, she seems to be particularly fond of the Angel Gabriel. I don't remember reading that part in the Bible. Oh, well... we'll get it right one of these days.) Also, you know you have a toddler in the house when you find baby Jesus in your shoe on a regular basis.

It's crazy how much he's changed and grown up in a year.  ::sigh:: While I look forward to the day when I don't have to worry for the safety of my Christmas ornaments or clean frosting out of his hair, I'm really going to miss these special holiday moments with a curious, spunky not-quite-two-year-old. Christmas loses a little of its appeal once you become an adult, but it becomes kind of magical again when you have a little one in the house.

Christmas Day

I was going to write all about Christmas Day with Perrin, but now that Trey's started a blog, he kind of took care of that already (http://blogalogadingdang.blogspot.com/2010/12/so-christmas.html). I thought that mildly amusing blog posts on our child's antics was MY territory, but whatever. His blog post is actually really good. Probably better than whatever I would have written. So I'm directing all of my faithful followers to his post to get the low-down on Christmas day.

But I couldn't resist posting a picture of Perrin unwrapping a present. He got the hang of wrapping paper pretty quickly. He'd rip off a big piece, then look at us guiltily as if he knew he'd just destroyed something and wasn't sure if we'd be happy about it. Then he'd shred more paper as we tried to get him excited about the actual present. Presents, shmesents--who cares about them when there's paper and ribbons and tape and boxes to play with?

First Christmas

Before Trey and I were even thinking about having Perrin, we talked about how we didn't want Christmas for our family to be all about presents. We wanted to focus on the significance of the birth of Christ and on spending time together as a family.

Now, here we are--Perrin's first Christmas. Will we hold true to our convictions? Here's a snapshot into our life as a family this season:

Me: (While walking around with Trey in WalMart) "It's not like Perrin's going to remember this Christmas anyway, so I don't think we need to go crazy with presents."

Trey: "I agree. Just a couple things. He'll be more interested in playing with the wrapping paper anyway."

Me: "Yep, so just a couple little things. We'll hardly spend any money at--OH MY GOSH! Look, it's a robot bunny that plays hide and seek with you! That is SO cool!"

Trey: "Ooh, and here's a submarine he can play with in the bathtub. We HAVE to get that."

Jayna: "And one of these baby laptops. Maybe now he'll stay away from mine."

Trey: "And don't forget we have to get stuff to fill up his stocking."

So... score 10 points for the commercialization of Christmas, zero so far for our hopes of injecting the true meaning of Christmas into our son's young life. I never thought it would be so hard to keep from spoiling him. I do have a child-friendly nativity that I'm going to set up and let him play with, and we'll read some Christmas books and sing Christmas carols that will be meaningful (or at least would be if he could understand them). Hopefully we'll end up with a good balance in the end.

How much can we cram into one month?

It's almost Christmas! Most years, the typical Christmas festivities (parties, decorating, baking, etc) are enough to keep me busy. But no, this year we're doing all of that PLUS setting up a nursery and remodeling our kitchen. Are we crazy? I'm beginning to think so.

Here's the plan: Over the next few days, Trey and I will completely unload all of our kitchen cabinets and drawers and pack everything into boxes. Then we will do demolition on the kitchen this Saturday. (Yes, we are having faith in ourselves that we can accomplish this in one day). Then, contractors will do some work for us on Monday-Wednesday of next week to take care of some plumbing and electrical issues. They will do the work flawlessly and on time with no "surprises." Then although we will be without a kitchen for over a week, we will have a holly jolly Christmas with our families, then install our new kitchen cabinets, counter top, sink and whatever else goes in a kitchen in the week between Christmas and New Year's. It will look perfect and magical and won't cost more than we're budgeting. Sound good? Yes. Sound plausible? We'll see. Just pray I don't go into labor early.