Tag Archives: Parenting

There are a lot of reasons why I'm glad we waited till we'd been married for a decade before moving ahead with Project Child, but one of them is that we had a number of holiday seasons in which to create our own holiday traditions without having to work a kid into them, too.  By the time Ian rolled around, we had things pretty sorted out -- you all know it can be hard to create new traditions while still upholding the old ones that you both bring to a relationship -- and, having had a long time to think about what is important to us, we had some pretty good ideas about how we want to share that with our son. 

We aren't religious by any definition, but that doesn't mean that it's not an important and sacred, if you'll forgive my use of the word, time of year for us.  We are lucky enough to have wonderful families that we love and are close to (and actually legitimately like, rather than just tolerate!) and if that's not worth celebrating, I don't know what is.  Giving and sharing and caring, and lighting the darkest nights of the year -- all things that are a wonderful basis for a holiday.

Last year we put up our Christmas tree after Ian had gone to bed, but this year he helped. (He helped us pick it out, too, of course!  He was much more interested in the proceedings than he was last year.)  He held the lights for Jim while he was putting them up, and then dropped a couple of ornaments under the tree (he can't quite work out how to actually hang them) before amusing himself sorting the non-breakable balls we bought into piles, while Jim and I did the actual decorating.  :-)

I've been going to the Wadsworth Atheneum for the annual Festival of Trees for years now, and last year I took Ian with me on a day off.  This year, Jim came along too.  I think the three of us were the only people there under the age of 50 on the Friday morning that we went, and so Ian was very busy amusing groups of little old ladies with his (well-behaved) antics.  We also went to the Christmas House in Torrington, which I cannot adequately explain for you other than to say that it is amazing that the place hasn't burned down, what with all the fire code violations.  It's awesome.

We didn't go see Santa -- Ian isn't old enough to care, and he HATES standing in line -- but he can now identify Santa on sight ("Tanta!") and will tell you that he says "ho, ho, ho" while rubbing his own little bowl full of jelly.

Most important of all, though, is spending time with our loved ones.  And this year we get to do it an extra lot -- we always celebrate Christmas in January with my family, so we still have that to look forward to -- but this year Jim's siblings and their spouses, sadly, couldn't overlap their visits home.  So we had our usual Christmas Eve with Jim's mom, grandma, sister, and her husband, and then Christmas Day with the three of us plus Mom and Grandma.  Tonight we're doing Christmas Eve, redux, but with Jim's brother and his wife in place of his sister and her husband.  Ian LOVES all the attention, and once he figured out what the deal was with presents, he loved THAT, too.  

Christmas morning at our house was nice and low-key.  Jim and I exchanged our gifts, and tried to get Ian to open some of his.  

He liked his very first present from Santa -- some play dishes -- so much, that all he wanted to do was play with them.  :-)  It took us most of the day to get through his gifts, one at a time as his interest dictated.  I can't say I minded it -- I know it'll only be a couple of years before he's in full-on Must Open All The Things As Quickly As Possible mode, and for now, it was nice to be able to spread it all out and see the excitement on his face as he opened each thing.  Everything elicited an "ooh!" or a "whoa!", and what really made my little nerdy librarian heart happy was when he opened up his very own copy of Gossie and Gertie -- he loves that book so much, he's worn the library copy right out -- and yelled out "Gossie!"  My boy can identify books!  And gets excited about them!  O happy day!

I sincerely hope that you all had a Christmas that was every ounce as happy and fun as ours was.  

And now, I can start to unveil the Christmas projects -- although even some of that will have to wait till the end of January, after we see my family!!