Hah-Ho!!

Here I sit, a blank screen in front of me, in my Christmas leggings and trying to reflect on the past year.   A year that has flown by, a whirlwind of diapers and playgrounds and new words.  Some of which Madison learned to say, some that I've created in frustration.   What will come of the remaining few days will be interesting, notably, Christmas Day.  

I have been very excited for Christmas for probably two months now, which in hindsight was likley excessive.  My husband would say it was, not just likely.  At work we started receiving Christmas stock in mid October and when I saw all of that arriving I began to have visions of sugar plums.   What the hell is a sugar plum?   Side note, we watched Elf last night.  That was a terrible movie.  I would have rather watched Die Hard (The most not Christmas Christmas movie ever).

So the minute Remembrance Day was over I started decorating.  I pulled out every box of decorations, ordered new ones from Amazon, hitting up WallyWorld before they had even taken down the clearance BBQ's leftover from summer.  I started showing them all to Madison:  "This is Santa,... these are pretty lights".  She gave less than a fuck.  So I decorated alone.  The only thing I could get her interested in was the Santa decals for the front door.  She had a great time sticking and unsticking them to the glass.  Now she's moved them so much that 96% of them are lost.  Pretty good chance she ate a small snowflake, or maybe the dog did.   She did in fact this morning eat the tinfoil off a chocolate Santa today; unaware that you need to unwrap it first.  

Her daycare provider has even more Christmas Fever than I do and her house was totally decked out; so being there she was exposed to The Tree.   I saw it assembled, and beautifully decorated and I said to her, "Oh shit.  I hope she doesn't wreck that".   She laughed and said it'll be fine; they are plastic ornaments.   Note to self: throw out all ornaments and buy brand new plastic ones.   But as the days we went on we started to teach her Ho Ho Ho.   This is Santa; he's going to come and bring you new toys.   " HO HO HO Merry Christmas! "   Nothing.. nadda.  Blank stare from the child and I question why I've even bothered this year.  

The beginning of December brings our second annual visit to Santa at the mall.  But I'm a busy mom and I frequently don't have my shit together.   This was one of those days.  Her pictures were on a Saturday afternoon; the Friday night before I worked until 10pm.   And she had nothing to wear.  I furiously ransacked the closet hoping to find some gaudy dress that her NanNan had bought her but came up empty handed.  I explain my peril to a good friend at work who comes through with a beautiful, brand new dress.   I rack my brain searching for a mom friend with a girl - boom; a quick text message back and forth and I've got shoes for her.  Thank the lord for girlfriends 💖.  I drive around at 1030pm collecting her outfit for the next day and crash into bed.  It's all worth it, she looks perfect to meet the big guy.  We also didn't look shabby, which worked out because we got one great family Christmas picture with Ho Ho Himself and then the one with just Maddy and Santa.  And that was a doozy.   She didn't quite cry in his lap, but she started to.   The camera captured the most priceless moment, brought to you by a Santa who knows what he's doing.  

So as the days go by, I go buy.... Dear Husband asked me just today if I thought I "went overboard" with Madisons gifts.  LOLZ.   Hardly babe, hardly.  Sure, she has a lot of gifts that will appear tomorrow morning, but a solid 8 of them are from out-of-town family whom I've shopped for.  One gift was free with points; most gifts were under 25 dollars... so what if there's 11 of them?!   It's Christmas, damnit, only comes once a year!   As I think about tomorrow morning, and what I can maybe expect I realize she really will make the morning what she wants it to be.   I figure it's going to be one of these two scenarios:

a) open one gift, play with it, and not care about anything else at all.

b) open one gift, see the fun in unwrapping and then try to unwrap every other gift, including the ones not for her. 

Since we've been in the holiday mode she's picked up a few new words, and has just in the last day strung together a three word sentence.   It seems like all of our practicing has paid off though.  Just a few days ago we went to Edmonton for a little getaway and fun at the mall.   At breakfast the second day she happily stood on the bench of the booth and pointed her little finger across the room at an older, white haired, bearded gentleman leaving the restaurant.  

"Hah-Ho!!"  She exclaimed as he walked out of sight; Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. 🎅🎅🎁🎁🎄🎄