As expected, Christmas with 2 1/2 year olds was much more exciting than Christmas with 1 1/2 year olds. Although they don't understand what Christmas is all about yet, there were glimpses of them putting the pieces together. And of course they definitely understood how to open presents, so that part was more fun than last year. Here are some highlights from our Christmas season:
- TREE DECORATING: Micah and the kids helped me decorate our small tree. Of course we only put up kid-friendly decorations and in some ways it was much more work letting the kids "help," but it was fun to spend a few minutes decorating as a family. The kids loved the lights on the tree and if I forgot to plug the tree in they would attempt to do it for me (yikes!). Although they were really curious about the ornaments at first, once we moved them all above their reach they were great about not touching the tree itself.
- FELT TREES: I made everyone their very own felt Christmas tree complete with decorations that they could put up themselves, but after the initial excitement they seemed to enjoy playing with the decorations in other ways more than putting them up on the tree. Maybe next year they'll enjoy decorating more.
- RIVER OF LIGHTS: We went to the opening night of the River of Lights at the ABQ Botanic Garden with Micah's parents when they were in town for Thanksgiving. Although it was a bit crowded, we all enjoyed looking at the variety of lights.
- CHRISTMAS LIGHTS: Two different evenings we loaded the kids into the car after dinner and drove around looking at lights. They really enjoyed it and we'll have to make this a family tradition.
- SANTA VISIT: We didn't say much about Santa as we haven't decided how we want to handle this in our family yet. We want Jesus to be the main focus of Christmas, not Santa, but Santa does bring a different element of fun to the celebrations and he is everywhere at Christmas, so next year we'll have to talk about him more. Because of this I didn't plan on taking the kids to the mall to visit Santa, plus I didn't want to deal with the crowd and I was pretty sure the kids would freak out once it was their turn to sit on his lap anyway. One day we ended up at the Infusion Center for Jack (an unplanned visit as he was sick), and we just happened to be there when Santa came for a visit! Apparently he had arrived at the hospital via helicopter and he spent many hours visiting patients. We were in a private room at the Infusion Center so while Jack was getting antibiotics through an IV, Alexis, Faith, Jack, and I got to meet Santa! He gave the kids stuffed animals and candy canes and posed for a photo. Although the kids were pretty scared by him (he was a super tall Santa), I was excited for the visit as it brought an element of fun to an otherwise sad part of our Christmas season. Jack never smiled when Santa was around, but he had had a pretty traumatic day already so we can't blame him.
- CHRISTMAS MOVIES: Although the kids don't watch a ton of TV, we decided to let them watch a couple of Christmas movies this year so one night we watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and another day we watched "Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas." We also had a couple of family movie nights, one with Micah's parents and one with my parents and we watched full-length movies that were kid friendly.
- MY BIRTHDAY: My birthday is December 22 so it always gets mixed in with Christmas activities. Micah went to work a little late that day as we originally planned on going out to breakfast as a family, but for some reason the kids were extra cranky that morning so we decided it would be better to get takeout breakfast burritos instead. After Micah went to work I took the kids to the Botanic Garden, which is my favorite place to go with the kids in ABQ. Although there isn't much to look at as far as plants this time of year, it is a great place for the kids to run around without me worrying about them getting lost or hurt, and it's peaceful. For dinner Micah picked up pizza, which was my request since we hardly ever eat pizza at our house. Instead of baking myself a cake, I bought cupcakes from the store when I picked up the burritos. All in all it was a nice day, even though we didn't do anything extra special. We tried to get the kids to sing Happy Birthday to me throughout the day but they weren't very enthusiastic about it. In the days following, though, they sang "Happy Birthday to Mommy" repeatedly, and it was adorable.
- NATIVITY SCENE: Micah's parents gave the kids a toy nativity scene at Christmas when they were six months old, and that was definitely a hit this year. The people and animals were played with daily. Alexis was particularly attached to Baby Jesus and she often brought him to her crib at nap time and she even spent a little time "feeding" him. Once the kids realized that there were songs related to each of the people in the nativity scene, we sang or played videos of those songs often (We Three Kings, Silent Night, Angels We Have Heard on High, Mary Did You Know, etc.). Alexis particularly enjoyed "Mary Did You Know" by Pentatonix and she literally teared up the first time she saw the video and heard the song. It was quite amazing for me to witness her heartfelt reaction to that song.
- PLANS CHANGED: For months we planned on going to Monte Vista to be with Micah's parents for Christmas. Unfortunately, Jack's platelets took a huge drop a few days before we were supposed to go and he had to have two platelet transfusions only a couple of days apart. Because of this, his doctors were not comfortable with Jack traveling four hours to an area that didn't have a Children's Hospital so they recommended that we stay home for Christmas. Although this was extremely disappointing as we were looking forward to getting away, we all wanted to make the best decision for Jack so we stayed in ABQ and Micah's parents drove down to us for a long weekend instead.
- JESUS IS THE REASON: We decided to keep the kids with us during the Christmas Eve service as until we got there we didn't realize there was childcare and we were thinking that the service would be shorter and filled with more music than a usual Sunday service. Overall the kids did great, although Alexis lost it towards the end and she had to be brought to the nursery. During the first part of the service, though, when a Bible passage was being read and the reader said Jesus' name Alexis exclaimed, "Jesus!" I love that the nativity scene made it easy to talk about Jesus daily and that Alexis was truly excited to hear the familiar name, even though she doesn't understand what it means yet.
- PLANS CHANGED AGAIN: On Christmas Eve after church we had the kids open gifts from Micah and myself. They enjoyed it, although they were a bit tired since it got to be so late. The plan was to wake up Christmas morning and open gifts with Micah's parents. Instead of a fun morning with Christmas PJ's and presents, though, we were surprised to find Faith extremely upset in her crib as she had just vomited. Micah and I spent Christmas day taking turns hanging out with Faith in our room while Grammy and Grandpa helped entertain Alexis and Faith. By the evening Faith seemed better and miraculously no one else got sick, so we were able to enjoy the honey baked ham dinner that we had planned and the gifts were opened in the evening.
- MORE TIME WITH DADDY: Micah's employer always closes between Christmas and New Year's so we were able to enjoy extra time with him throughout the week. Between grandparent visits we did some things that I can't do alone with the kids, such as go to a story time and take the kids to the mall to run around and burn some energy.
- NYE MORNING: My parents arrived on December 30th around midnight, so we were able to celebrate Christmas with them on New Year's Eve morning. The kids were very excited to open another round of gifts, and I was thankful that we were able to celebrate in the morning instead of the evening this time as the kids are generally so much happier at that time of day.
- NEW YEAR'S EVE: We made sure to get the kids to bed on time on New Year's Eve so that the adults could enjoy a couple of hours before midnight EST. My mom and I played Scrabble, Micah joined us for a game of Banagrams, my dad watched football, and we all ate snacks and sweets. Just before midnight we poured the champagne, turned on the TV, watched the ball drop, and then said goodnight. My parents were tired from traveling late the day before, and it doesn't make sense to stay up until midnight MST when we have to get up at 6:30 with the kids no matter what. Although it was low-key, we enjoyed our evening.
