December 2007

This month was Lily's third Christmas. She knows what Santa looks like now, though (as we found out last month) she's still not ready to sit in his lap. One day when we were walking around the neighborhood and saw some Christmas decorations, one house had Santa sitting on a small green sleigh. Lily pointed and said, "Santa's sitting on the potty." Heh!

When Lily woke up on Christmas morning, we asked if she wanted to go open presents, and she said shook her head. She just wanted to go in the family room and watch TV. So we did that for a while, and when she was more awake, we went in the playroom where the tree and presents were. In both my family and Michelle's family growing up, Santa's presents were never wrapped, so that's how it happened this Christmas. By a lucky coincidence, all the hard-to-wrap presents came from Santa!

We had to open presents in several stages. We were planning to open all the presents from us and other family members on Christmas Eve, and then get Santa's presents on Christmas morning, but it didn't work out that way. We opened some presents Christmas Eve, but Lily got tired of it and didn't want to do it anymore. It was too distracting opening the later presents when she wasn't done playing with the earlier ones. It took us three days, and I think either four or five sessions, to get through all the presents! We didn't actually spend that much on her (for us!), but we bought her a lot of small gifts. After some initial glee, I think the gift-opening felt like a chore for Lily.

On the other hand, a couple days after Christmas she was getting the hang of it, and said, "Let's open more presents!" I had to break it to her that there weren't any more!


The day care center had a Christmas program, and all us parents were there videotaping every second of it. Lily's always liked music and dancing. Most of the kids stood there in silence, but Lily looked excited the whole time. Two other parents commented that Lily's going to be a performer.


Here's a movie of their first song, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. You can tell in the beginning Lily starts doing the motions for the dance, but then realizes the other kids aren't doing them and keeps looking around. At the end of the song one girl runs to her parents, and then her sister runs off too. In a later song, Lily ran back and forth to us several times too. To download the whole show (588 MB), click here (MPEG format).


After the show, the teachers had cookies and drinks for the kids and parents. Here are the moms with Liy, Madeline, and Cailey. Notice that Madeline was "Vixen" the reindeer, and Cailey was "Comet". Lily was "Blitzen". We feel sorry for Madeline's dad that she's already labeled "Vixen"!


We bought one of those all-natural (ahem) trees that comes with lights already attached and stays green for years. We decorated it a few days before Christmas, and Lily helped. There's a lower branch on the right where she put an inordinate number of ornaments. Other ornaments reflect the kookiness that is our family, like Simpsons figures and a "You Might Be A Redneck" sign.


Here's our first round of gift-opening, on Christmas Eve. Lily was happy about it at this stage.


This is the first Christmas where Lily could open presents by herself (at least partly). She opened this one from Michelle's cousin Missy. I put way too much tape all over the presents I wrapped, so we had to help her with those.


The Peughs invited us to their house for Christmas Eve. The kids are opening some presents in these pictures. The little bed Madeline got may require explanation -- it's not for her, but for her doll! Cameron got a metal scooter with the not-very-comforting name "JackKnife". Lily got dominoes with Dora characters on them.


As we were getting ready to leave the Peughs' house, Lily tripped and hurt her mouth. Her loving Mommy got her a bag of ice to make it better.


Lily got a drum set and a little piano on Christmas morning. They were from Santa, so they were already set up when we came in the playroom. (On an unrelated note, Michelle and I were up late the night before.) She also got a little guitar, so there was a musical theme to these gifts.


While we were out shopping for presents, Lily kept playing with three little cars on a track, so we brought them home. Then she forgot about the cars, so we wrapped them up as a present!


We got her a set of four black "guns" that shoot red circles, and when other kids come over, they can each play with one. Lily had no trouble figuring out how to turn the gun on and shoot it. (I did, though, and shot a soft red circle in my face.) Soon we had 70 little red circles all over the house. I was able to find and recover 68 of them. Pretty good, eh?


My parents sent this big Santa, and Lily likes it. She gave Santa one of her presents. That was sweet, but her motive may have not been altruism as much as frustration. She looked at the remaining wrapped gifts with a listless frown. I think she was tired of opening presents and wanted to get rid of some!


Here are our Christmas stockings -- Rudolph for Michelle, Elmo for Lily, and Homer for me. The extra Simpsons stocking is for Lily's Cabbage Patch doll, Darrien. She said he needed a stocking too.


This is the first Christmas we spent alone, not just since Lily was born, but in our whole marriage. It was kind of fun, though, because we could start making our own holiday traditions.


One of the presents Lola and Papa sent was this Dora The Explorer vanity. You can comb Dora's hair and pretend to blow-dry it, and put hair clips in, and pretend to cut it with dull scissors. It sounds really boring, but for some reason, Lily kept playing with it at the store, and she loves playing with it now too. Do you see those wrapped gifts on the vanity in the third picture? Lily gave away two more presents, to Dora and Boots the monkey.


Lily got some Play-Doh from Santa. She's always liked Play-Doh, but it goes bad quickly and we keep needing more. Here she's making the different colors into thin lines to make a rainbow. She called the red one "roho", and the blue one "azul", and the yellow one "amarillo" -- she gets this from watching Dora so much. She didn't know the Spanish words for pink and brown, so we sent Mommy to the computer to find out. Pink is "rosada" apparently, and brown is "marron".


Most kids are not terribly excited about getting clothes as gifts. (I know I wasn't.) Lily sometimes asks to go shopping because she "needs more outfits", so I thought she might like getting clothes, but the answer was no. When she opened every box of clothes, she pulled out the clothes and threw them over her shoulder!


This is supposedly "Michelle's" clothes closet. Much of it has been taken over by Lily's clothes!


I had to take Lily to the doctor this month, though it was totally a false alarm. The day care center scraped little yellow flecks out of her ear and said I had to come pick her up in case it was an ear infection. The doctor said it was just normal ear wax! Thanks for pulling me out of work early, jerks! I had stuff to finish. But Lily was very good at the doctor's, and we just played while waiting. She hasn't been there in almost a year I think, so I don't think she remembers getting shots or being afraid of the place.


To free up space in Lily's playroom, we split her two-part play-yard in half, and kept the slide part in the playroom. We moved the house part into her bedroom. It fits reasonably well in a corner.


We bought Lily a new big-girl bed for her room. We're going to buy some Dora The Explorer sheets and blankets for it. She said she also wants Backyardigans sheets.


The Willises and Peughs invited us over for New Year's Eve, which was fun. The kids are lower-maintenance when they can play with each other. Here are Bill and Michelle, and Susan and Mike.


The two girls were sitting and giggling together, for reasons no outside observer could follow.


Here's an Elmo puzzle somebody put together, and Madeline and Lily enjoyed ripping apart.


Lily made a rainbow out of Magnetix parts and was very proud of it.


I spent the evening imbibing lots of Anchor Porter, with my beloved designated driver Michelle taking us home. The second photo is early in the night, and the third droopy-eyelid photo is after lots of beer!