Christmas 2013

We had to scale back our Christmas plans because Lilian was sick, but we still managed to have a loverly holiday. My in-laws weren’t feeling too fussed about germs (they just wanted to see their grandbaby), so we drove to their house for Christmas Eve, as planned. We had to enforce a no-kissing rule (which is well nigh impossible when it comes to Kristian’s mom!), but I think we managed to keep everybody uninfected.

Everybody was far too generous with presents for Lilian, but I didn’t hear any complaints, especially from her.

Kristian’s parents bought her a xylophone glockenspiel (according to my nephew it’s a glockenspiel because it has metal keys) and a jack-in-the-box.

(The toy kind, not the disgusting fast food kind.)

(Natch.)

Kristian’s sister bought her the best present that you could ever give a little girl. Namely, a pony. Well, a Rody. Which is pony shaped, and you can sit on it and bounce up and down. You can’t feed it carrot sticks or lumps of sugar, but for a 16-month-old, it’s just as good as getting a pony for Christmas. Kristian’s brother and his girlfriend got her a little, pink ukulele. So, now she can entertain us all from the saddle, Gene Autry-style.

We got her a little a tunnel and playhouse set from Ikea, which is not nearly as fun as a Rody.

We decided to let her celebrate the holiday in style. Namely, by eating as many chocolates and macaroons as she could cram into her little, tiny face. She basically ran around the house being fussed over, playing with her new toys, and eating large amounts of sugar. Well, she had like 4 chocolates. But, we don’t normally let her eat candy. Compared to her everyday life, this was a sugar binge of epic proportions. It could have ended in the most terrible of meltdowns, but we got really lucky. At the first sign of eye-rubbing, we got her changed into her PJs. Then, we said some quick goodbyes and headed home. She passed out in the car, Kristian got her transferred into bed, and there were hardly any tears at all.

We were rewarded for our terrible parenting with an extra hour of sleep on Christmas morning. Which, if you ask me, is a goddamn Christmas Miracle™. It’s also probably the last time that we will ever get to sleep in on Christmas morning. Next year Lilian is going to be hip to the whole concept of Santa and will probably dive-bomb our heads at 4am demanding to be taken to her stocking. I’m glad we took a couple minutes to savor the realization that it was 8:30am and we were still in bed.

We probably bought Lilian more presents than we needed to. But, let’s be honest here, I was getting a little sick of a lot of her toys. So, I bought her some new things for me to play with. I am also milking the fact that toys for toddlers are stupid cheap. We got her some great stuff and I think it was less than $100. When she’s a teenager, that will probably buy her, like, one add-on pack for her virtual reality simulator. And it will be the wrong add-on pack, god mom why are you so dumb I HATE YOU.

(Christmas is so much fun when your kid gets excited about playing with the boxes that her toys came in.)

I think I’m the most excited about her new farm and farm-stand. We will probably need to turn the barn sounds off sooner than later, or I will probably become a lot less excited about her farm and farm-stand.

Of course, the thing that excites her the most about her farm is all of the horrible noises that it makes. Because duh.

(Signs of a quality toy: the off-switch is under that rather heavy base. Which means it’s going to be well-nigh impossible for her to turn the sounds back on.)

(Grandmas can buy xylophones glockenspiels, but parents always buy toys with off switches.)

(Or toys that don’t light up or make noises at all, but I know a losing battle when I see one.)

Lilian might have been a potential Typhoid Coxsackie Mary, but the rest of us weren’t contagious. So I drove over to my Mom’s house for a quick visit. I dropped off everybody’s presents and had a taste of their Christmas dinner. I even got to play with the block set we got for our niece for a bit. But then I felt guilty for leaving Kristian all cooped up with a sick 16-month-old, so I rushed back home.

It did feel weird to walk up to my mom’s house all on my lonesome. I had a couple of bottles of prosecco in my purse, and a bag full of presents for the kids. I was also (very) fashionably late. I was also wearing some very fashionable shoes. It felt a little bit like being the slightly spastic, single aunt. Except my husband and daughter were at home hanging out. It’s hard to describe, but it was a bizarre little moment.

Kristian had already bought all of the fixings for a big Christmas dinner when we realized we had to change our plans, so we went ahead and cooked everything up. And by “we,” I mean “Kristian.” And by “everything,” I mean everything. We ate like kings and then had leftovers for the rest of the week.

We ended up inviting a couple friends over to share our dinner with us. An enormous 15-person celebration would have been a little too crazy for them (well, let’s be honest, our standard holiday gathering is a little too crazy for most people), but they were happy to come over for a smaller get-together. I decided to pull out all of our nice china. Because it was Christmas, and we were going to celebrate goddammit. We even used my great-grandmother’s silverware (there normally isn’t enough of it to go around). I think I set a pretty nice table.

My contribution? I made a chocolate cake. The Cook’s Illustrated Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake, to be more specific. Of course, you can’t get the actual recipe for it unless you pay them a bunch of money and then let them put you on all sorts of lists that they never let you unsubscribe from. So I used a recipe that I found on some food blogger’s website. Her instructions were so painfully twee, I think I managed to make at least four major mistakes while attempting to follow them.

(Apparently, forgetting to include the butter is kind of a big deal. Although I did manage to smash it in there towards the end.)

I think my mistakes mostly offset each other. At the very least, the cake was edible. I even managed to make it look somewhat attractive. And then, after taking copious amounts of trash about food bloggers and how ridiculous most of them are, what did I do? I went and took a whole bunch of pictures of that stupid cake. Because hypocrisy.

The cake was not a lie.

I was sad to not spend more time with my family. And I was even more sad that Lilian didn’t get to play with her cousins or see her great-grandmother. But I was ever so grateful that we didn’t have to deal with anything more than a gross-looking virus. It wasn’t the Christmas that we wanted, but it was still Christmas. And a fantastic one at that.

Next weekend we get to do the whole shebang all over again with my Dad’s side of the family. Because what’s better than being a child of divorce and getting two Christmases? Being the grandchild of divorce and getting three Christmases.

(The best thing of all is probably for everyone to stay happily married.)

(But then I would have about half as many amazing people in my life.)

(So, I think I’ll keep my step-parents, step-siblings, and three Christmases.)

I feel a little silly about getting so upset about having to change our plans. An acquaintance spent Christmas with his wife in the hospital, because they just found out that she has metastatic cancer. Now that is a shitty Christmas.  But I am proud that Kristian and I decided to take our change of plans in stride. We could have ordered Chinese food and spent the day sulking. But we made ourselves a delicious dinner and found ways to make the day special. And you know it’s love when your husband says, “I’ll take care of the sick toddler for a couple hours. Why don’t you go see your family.” I think the holiday ended up being as wonderful as it was because we had a good attitude about it all.

I will say this, though. My sister and I have made tentative plans to get everybody together in the new year. And if Lilian gets some other exotic disease and we have to cancel those plans? I will have some words for the universe. Words.

How did your Holiday go?