Christmas 2009

Christmas Eve
I've been trying to engage Oliver in conversation about Christmas as much as possible, as this year he is so much more aware of it. But Oliver is such an excitable boy sometimes, it's hard to really get a conversation where you look into his eyes and see the excitement that Father Christmas is coming. So I made a point over the final week of talking up the big day, counting down the number of sleeps and generally enjoying the thrill of seeing my little boy genuinely excited about Father Christmas's impending arrival. This video was filmed on Christmas Eve before they went to bed. You can see the carrot for Rudolph and Mince Pie for Santa on the table. They both seem suitably excited, though Lucy gives some unexpected views and then wants to be the cameraman.



Christmas Day
We were up until about 1.30am on Christmas morning as we had trouble with one of Lucy's planned presents, a rather lovely toy kitchen. It turned out to have half the screws and bolts missing. After two hours we had to admit defeat, taking comfort in the fact that her "new dolly" was by far her most wanted gift.

At 7am both kids rose. I tried to persuade them to come into our bed for a cuddle, but they were understandably impatient to go downstairs and see whether Father Christmas had visited.

We had set out a drum kit for Oliver and a keyboard for Lucy so these were the first presents tried out. After that there was a stream of wrapping paper flying past our eyes as they eagerly tackled all there was to be unwrapped. After the initial chaos had passed and we had eaten some breakfast, we tried to get ready to leave. This was not helped by Lucy being prematurely over-tired and wanting me to constantly pick her up, resulting in endless screaming when I couldn't oblige. But eventually we did get under way in the car and she instantly fell asleep.

This year we did something different on Christmas Day: we dined out with nine other family members, the idea being to save everyone the pain of cooking for a large number of people. It turns out that the pain of cooking is arguably less than that of getting from our house to the restaurant on time whilst making sure we are fully packed for the following couple of days away at my Mum's place.

Next year everyone is invited to our place again!

The meal was a bit chaotic - they had lost our order and we also had to go chasing Lucy who kept wanting to go and closely inspect the real fire that had no guard - but otherwise was rather enjoyable.





Afterwards we decamped to my Mum's place where presents were opened and Oliver finally got hold of his much requested Go Diego Go back-pack. In fact he got three different Go Diego Go back-packs because my Mum wasn't sure which was the right one! Thankfully, one was the one he desired and he was delighted. (He seemed pretty pleased with the others too, to be fair.)

Lucy had already got her "new dolly" at our house, having asked for it consistently for weeks. She was predictably thrilled with it.

We had Boxing Day at my Mum's house - much of which I spent suffering a head cold - before returning home on the 27th. On our return, after a poor night's sleep for both Hayley and I, all four of us ended up curling up in the sofa-bed in the spare room to watch a movie.



It's been a great Christmas but it's nice to be back in our own space too.

So what now? Well we have a few days off before returning to work in the New Year and the first of those days has been spent in what I have started to appreciate is another Christmas tradition if you have kids: going to shops to exchange gifted clothes for something that fits!