Christmas 2005
Warning: Nothing in this post is funny, amusing or insightful. It's a boring story about this year's Christmas with the kids. For non parents, you might want to skip it. In fact, for people who have kids, you might find it boring too.
Christmas is over. It was kind of an interesting one for us, and since Emily is at the age to really anticipate it, fun. During the week Ethan, 16 months, got sick. He had a high fever and threw up. A comforting trip to the doctor determined it was viral and had to run its course. So on Thursday of course Emily, 3 years and 7 months, got sick too. By the time she got sick Ethan didn’t have a fever anymore but was coughing a ton and lost his voice. Emily had a high fever. The thing with Emily and her fever is that we don’t really worry with her. She can communicate much better than the younger one so we knew that if she felt really bad she would tell us. So by the time Friday night rolled around, we had two pretty sick kids.
Patti’s parents came up for Christmas and arrived late Friday night. We were planning a pretty low key weekend with friends over on Christmas Eve morning, but with our little two sick decided to cancel. Friday night Ethan was up until about 2AM with a bad cough and congested lungs and then Emily was up from 3 until normal waking time with a fever. Whatever, they are kids and kids get sick, even around Christmas.
Christmas Eve turned out to be a lot of fun. Because both kids were sick, they were actually on their best behavior, if you can believe that. Emily was really sweet and kind of a mush, or moosh. Ethan was just sick and a little cranky, but nothing to do about that. Jim and I ran some errands late morning while everyone else napped, and then took both kids into the city around 2 since they were feeling better. In Boston, it’s kind of a fun thing to go to the Boston Common and ice skate on Christmas Eve. Since it was around 55 the park was packed. Jim and I took the kids in to the city to give Patti and her mom some space to bake breads and cookies. We walked around the park, watched people ice skate, and then let Emily play in the playground. Ethan just kind of hung out in the stroller. We stopped at the store on our way home to get some last minute items (chocolate chips, eggs, diet root beer).
Christmas Eve we had every intention of going to church but didn’t make it, mostly due to running behind schedule and two sick kids. It turned out to be a ton of fun with normal kid playing activity (spent a large amount of time with the kids throwing things around, against Patti’s wishes), barbequed pork chops, good wine, children bedtime activities and three hours of way-to-many-commercial-filled It’s a Wonderful Life viewing. Side note: I love It’s A Wonderful Life, its one of my favorite movies and I subject Patti to watching it every year, sort of a tradition, it still gets me choked up, although they never mentioned that the mob that brings George money at the end gets really drunk on Mr. Martini’s wine and storms Mr. Potter’s house and beats him into unconsciousness for being such a (expletive deleted), and that Mr. Potter’s first initial is H, just like Harry Potter, a coincidence that I think needs further investigation. Anyway, we watched the movie which made me happy. We ended the night with putting out all the gifts, which were hidden before that moment and I am not joking not a single gift was put out before that, mostly because Ethan and the cat would have probably done something to them, so the tree went from being completely barren to filling a good portion of the living room with gift wrapped packages. It was fun doing that.
Christmas day was as expected. Emily went crazy with all the gifts and Ethan was completely overwhelmed. At one point he just lost it and started pushing the wrapped gifts aside looking for an old toy, I guess a comforting way of dealing with the confusion. The morning ended with the first floor of our house a total mess, a toy carnage.
The rest of the day was pretty mellow. Emily was lost in a world of new toys and Ethan was out of his element with the amount of stuff in each room. Both were still not 100% with their health so we took it easy. We had a really nice dinner that Patti put together and then watched a movie after the kids went to bed.
Our friends and relatives spoiled the kids with gifts and Patti and I got Emily some of the stuff that she wanted. This was her first Christmas where she had a specific item in mind that she asked for, and since it wasn’t too expensive we got it for her. Ethan played with the boxes as much as the new toys but he had a blast. Patti’s parents were great with the kids and overall another Christmas came and went with some nice memories.
That’s it. Nothing too exciting, no crazy or funny story about this or that, just another fun Christmas with the kids. Next year there will be three so things should be interesting. Now it’s back to normal and finding a place to put all the extra stuff.