Welcome back. I hope that everyone had a nice, relaxing holiday time, although I know that most of you didn't considering that it was, in fact, the holidays. I have been toiling over this 'First Christmas' post for about a week trying to decide how I was going to approach it. I wrote about five drafts, some of them with more pictures than words, others long enough to be converted in to a novel. Unsatisfied, I took a step back, had a drink and remembered why I am writing this blog in the first place. It isn't to brag about my kid or document her life like an Internet scrapbook, it is to document my own experiences and my fly-by-night parenting efforts. With my purpose realized (sort of) and Monica back to work this week, I am finally inspired to write again.
There have been countless times in my life where an event or situation has not lived up to the anticipation that preceded it, and after Av's first Christmas I can add another bullet to that list.
Since early December an entire room of our tiny second floor apartment has been devoted to Av's Christmas. Hundreds of dollars worth of toys and clothes sat wrapped under the tree for weeks. Bows and ribbons and Christmas cards donned the walls and every morning she would walk over to play with the wrapped boxes with no idea that there was anything actually inside of them.
All of the anticipation of knowing what was in the boxes made me excited to see her open them up on Christmas, hoping that my selections would bring a smile to her face. So, with this in mind and those same boxes now blocking the back window of my car, we made the trek to Dedham to celebrate the holidays with Monica's family.
In retrospect, Christmas was exactly how it should have been. It was pretty much just like any other day with the baby, there was just a considerably larger amount of people getting in her face. She woke up bright and early, played a little bit and was down for a nap before most of the family was even awake. She only opened one gift that morning, an unwrapped wagon that was sitting in the living room. She absolutely loved this wagon, as you can see from the picture above, and spent the entire morning sitting in it and laughing.
As for the rest of the gifts they were opened sporadically throughout the day with little fanfare. Eventually she figured out that the things in the boxes were for her, but her attention span is still a little short, so she would just play with the one toy and showed little to no interest in moving on to the others. I was pretty disappointed at first, as I was hoping for AFV-winning videos and stacks and stacks of cute, excited photos, but when I stepped back and thought about it Christmas was exactly as it should have been. Her biggest contribution was getting us out of both church and spending any significant amount of time at Monica's grandparent's house. Thanks, kid. Next year, as we head full speed toward the Terrible Two's, will me much more fun. I hope.
More important to me was the time following Christmas. I knew Monica had the week off and I was looking forward to both a break from having her alone all day and to some fun family events during the week. Unfortunately, this crappy New England weather that we have ruined much of the week and any chance of traveling somewhere extravagant was pretty much gone (and yes, I am at the point in my life where I pretty much consider anywhere outside the Salem/ Beverly area extravagant. Don't even get me started on going to Boston. It might as well be Australia).
So much of the week was spent in the apartment hanging out, playing, and learning how to walk (which she can do now, video to follow later this week). Also, it gave her a chance to become religiously attached to her mother again like she was this summer. Meaning, essentially, that I can only pick her up or go near her if we are playing or if Monica isn't home, and I am pretty much shut out at bedtime, snack time and at any point that she wakes up during the night. This has also taken a tole on what was starting to be a good sleep schedule. Now she wakes up at night calling for Mom again, and will not nap nearly as long during the day. This has made me nervous to go back to having her all day and reminded me that no matter how cool I think I am, I can't even hold a candle to Mom in her eyes. (In every other situation, of course, no one is cooler than me).
There you have it. An uneventful Christmas (at least for Av) and an uneventful week of nothing that followed. New Year's Eve was spent on the couch and the last three days of the weekend were spent at the Beer Works hawking beer... and so another 12-month journey begins. The next big event is Av's birthday in February, meaning I have about six weeks of mundane parenting ahead of me. Lucky readers!
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