Holiday Hangover

Well , an entire week has yet again past , Christmas is but a fading memory and the New Year approaches swift on it's heels. We are still reeling from all of the unpacking from our trip , holiday prep and much merriment - all in the span of what seemed like an extraordinarily short week.

This was Colin's First Christmas and he bit into it like a bright ,shiny red apple. It was pure joy on his face as he ripped through piles of tissue paper and beheld the myriad of lights, bells and shiny objects all around.
He cackled with glee and put everything into his tiny elf mouth.

We had a real old fashioned Christmas procession down the stairs in the morning , with all of the kids ( Nooni leading the way) and hung the stockings on an old ladder because , alas, we have no hearth. I made my traditional family recipe for French Meat Pie and an apple croustade for dessert which was met with a chorus of applause. I pureed some in the Cuisinart for Bug , too. His favorite was the homemade cranberry sauce.

We all went to my sister-in-laws the day after for the Schaeffer clan celebration and Colin contentedly played on the floor for five hours until he finally slumped over from happy exhaustion. We all went to bed with full hearts and bellies that night.

Colin received a lot of nice "1st Christmas" baby gifts but i am secretly elated that he loves my gift the best of all. I wanted to give him one simple gift so he would have something to open so we could record the moment for him. i ended up getting a chunky wooden Bug puzzle for him , thinking he was yet really too small to really appreciate it. Boy , was i ever wrong !
He immediately grabbed it and his ardor has yet to cool down- he lifts the entire puzzle , dumping all of the pieces to the floor, picks them up one by one , tries to fit them back in , bangs them together , puts them in his little birdy mouth and otherwise expresses his intense love for my gift in his exuberant high-pitched monkey screeching way.
Bullseye ! I got it right ! The Bug's first Christmas was an unqualified success.
But i got the very best gift of all, my own beautiful , darling baby boy- so long in coming- so completely and definitively a surprise- just what i always wanted and who knew? - just the thing i needed, too.

Thank you , Santa.
Thank you , Creator.

Thank you for filling my life with love.