Christmas

We’re rewinding a bit to mid-December, when Jack and I made Christmas cookies.  I’d like it recorded here, so I can get my Awesome Holiday Mom points.  See, we have that book “The Sweet Smell of Christmas,” in which Mother Bear makes gingerbread boys to hang on the tree, and after reading it Jack decided that gingerbread boys must be made in our house.  I just follow orders around here.

I haven’t made roll-out cookies in, like, forever.  I have no rolling pin, but located a glass vase that worked well (I was very careful not to break the darn thing and ruin all our hard work).  As for cookie cutters – preliminary investigations showed that my collection consists of a gingerbread boy and girl (convenient), the shape of Texas, and a cactus.  I have no connection to Texas whatsoever – I have no idea why I have a Texas cookie cutter – or a cactus for that matter.  But in any case, for variety’s sake- and because the gingerbread kids were HUGE and made enormous cookies – I tried to also make ornament shapes by cutting circles and sticking a little blob of dough on the top for the hanger part.

They did sort of look like pumpkins.  Anyway, over the course of three days I mixed & chilled 3 kinds of dough (day one), made frosting and rolled and baked 3 kinds of cookies (day two – gingerbread, chocolate chip, and sugar), and then frosted and decorated them (day three).  It was a most excellent exam decompression activity.  Jack was “helping” every step of the way.

I believe I earned my Martha Stewart awesome holiday mom badge that day.  Anyhow, shortly after this we said good-bye to our cute tree and our house and our decorations, and headed off to Nashville, where all of my siblings and their spouses/boyfriends/cats were waiting.  My brother brought his Xbox Kinect, my sister brought her Wii.  We spent many an hour learning the awesomeness of video games these days.  I really had no idea.  I haven’t played a video game on a console since the original Nintendo, I don’t believe.

In addition to lounging about the house being useless, we also took the boys to the Play Places in a McDonalds and a Chick-fil-a (the rain kept us from going to an outdoor playground), we did some last minute shopping, went out to lunch, went on a hike once or twice, and went to the zoo.  We also took them to see Santa.  I’ve yet to meet a Santa who plays the part very well – this dude wasn’t really into it.  The random bearded guy at the post office was better.  But anyhow, we got the obligatory picture, and Jack asked for a rabbit and a drum.  He got both.

Before going to bed on Christmas Eve*, the boys wrote a letter to Santa with the help of Uncle Shelby.  We also put out a few cookies, and some “sticks” for the reindeer (carrots).

Just before bed, I assembled the family for a group shot.  Which I unfortunately had to take, so I’m not in it.  But that’s ok.  You know what I look like.

Christmas morning was awesome.  There were like 14 people there, so the pile of presents was amazingly huge.  Most of it was for the boys!  They got some dress up clothes, a few princess toys (Jack totally digs princesses, man), lots of play kitchen stuff, tons of Cars paraphernalia, and about a zillion trillion matchbox cars.

Included in the dress up stuff was this tutu and crown.  Jack loves tutus.  He’s been dying for a tutu for months.  All his little girl friends at school have them, and he wants one, too.  He loves princess movies so much, it’s ridiculous.  Toys (and clothes, and colors, and all the rest) are so aggressively gendered in America – it’s hard to buy your little boy a tutu without seeming to be Making a Point.  But I wasn’t.  Jack wanted a tutu, Jack got a tutu (from his Aunt Amanda).  He loves the thing, and I think that’s darn cute.

The boys also got these, which Santa bought last minute (along with a drum and a rabbit, ahem).  The knight “chain mail” cape and dragon cape were by far Jack’s favorite thing.  He terrorized all of us for the rest of the vacation, enlisting his Aunts and Uncles to be knights and walk around slaying the various dragons around the house (Mama-Dragon, Aunt Caki-Dragon, Nana-Dragon, and so forth.)  Early on, Uncle Shelby taught Jack to fake-stab people in the armpit, letting them catch the sword between their arm and side.  This lesson probably prevented many injuries.  Kind of genius.  Anyway, my sisters were unflagging in their energy, and always willing to hop up, strap on a cape, and run around the house slaying dragons.  It made Jack’s week.  It also conveniently wore him out.

The week was fabulous.  We had a wonderful time.  I went on runs most days (without having to push kids in a stroller!  The luxury!), went to two movies, went disc golfing with all of my siblings and was tragically bad at it, went to the driving range with two brothers and was slightly less bad at that, and basically basked in the warm glow of family and support.  As Shelby (Amanda’s new husband) put it – 10 adults is just about the perfect amount of people to raise two boys.  We all take turns, and no one gets too tired.

But it came time to come home, and come home we did.  I still haven’t taken down our decorations or sorted the new toys – that’s on the list for this week, along with a couple of other things.  Luckily, getting back in the swing of things isn’t so depressing for people who live in New Orleans – because MARDI GRAS is just around the corner . . .

*Liam caught a terrible cold from a kid we went to dinner with – so “going to bed” pretty much meant “taking Liam into a room and holding him while he screams.”  I just want to say thanks, kid’s parents, for bringing him along to share the germs!  It was totally awesome dealing with a sick non-sleeping child all Christmas!  I also loved catching the cold myself, as did my sisters!  Luckily, I am wise in the ways of ear infections, and I managed to sweet talk a nurse practitioner into giving us antibiotics a few days before Christmas.  I knew that an ear infection would hit on December 25 (which it did), and thus saved myself the cost of an ER visit by already having augmentin in the refrigerator.  Poor Liam – he’s had so many of these, I can diagram how they’re going to go, down to the hour.