Merry Christmas

December has gotten away from me (what else is new?).  As usual much has happened, but I want to write a Christmas post before anything else.

Today was the third time in these three weeks that my Christmas tree has been knocked over--Emily two times, Norte once.  Miraculously, my grandmother's glass christmas ball has survived intact... most of my hand painted salt dough ornaments, however have been glued and re-glued.  Today I put away all the breakable ornaments because I'd had it up to here.

Emily is in love with the Christmas tree and it's pretty cute.  She kisses it good night and hugs it.  She hangs all manner of strange things on it and has tied ribbons of some of the boughs.  It is easy to see how all the love and affection has lead to more than one accident.  As for Norte, he pulls the Christmas balls off the tree to chew them and thus pulled down the whole tree!

Our Christmas was a strange one to say the least.  Toward the end of dinner Christmas Eve Emily began complaining that her ear hurt.  I gave her some tylenol and put her to bed.  She woke up at about 11:30 screaming in pain.  So we spent Christmas eve in the ER (thankfully, there was no one there and we were seen right away).  Emily was diagnosed with an outer ear infection!  She still has her cough and is using an inhaler morning and evening for that... The poor kid is has to go around with an entire drugstore in tow. :(

Santa wearily prepared gifts when we got back from the ER, but our Christmas morning was a near fail because Angelines and I have had zero time to buy each other (or ourselves) gifts.  I was proud of myself because we had purchased Emily's few gifts weeks ahead of time...otherwise, she very well might have had nothing!  But my sweet, considerate girl observed sadly as she choked back tears, that Santa didn't bring anything for Mommy or Mamá. :(

I am not a present person.  Don't get me wrong, I love finding the perfect gift for someone and seeing the look on their face when they open it; but I do not like giving for giving's sake.  If I can't come up with a gift that I think will actually be appreciated and used, I prefer to give nothing.  The pressure at Christmas to get a gift for everyone is just annoying most of the time.  Really, here in Spain, there is less of that consumerist take on things: or maybe it is just Angelines and my family here; but we don't fret about gifts and hardly give Christmas presents.  It is such a relief, honestly to just enjoy the season without stressful last-minute shopping.  If I get one little thing and Christmas, I am happy, and I do my best to get something small for Angelines, but this year was impossible.  I won't rule out a King's Day gift, but Christmas was too soon to get anything lined up.

Of course, I couldn't explain any of that to my four-year-old who was visibly effected by Santa's lack of consideration for her parents.  I did my best to explain to her that my very favorite gift at Christmas is spending time with her and Mamá...but that didn't comfort her much.  I think part of it was lack of sleep.  She was out of sorts all morning and wouldn't even eat pancakes for breakfast.  Around 11 she began crying that her ear was hurting again and when the medicine finally kicked in, she fell asleep on the couch and slept for a good three hours.

I confided in Angelines that I was very sad because of how sad Emily had obviously been for us.  As I was tidying up the house with a sleeping, sick baby on the couch, my Christmas elf snuck out and went down the road to the gift shop at a truck stop near town--the only thing open Christmas day!--and bought a gift for me and herself. :)  When she arrived home with the presents, I sent her back for one more little thing for Emily just because.

When Emily woke up, she found a second note from Santa who explained that apparently he had got all the way back to the North Pole only to discover that he had forgotten to give Mommy and Mamá their presents...and one more for her!  He claimed it was his age... ;)  Anyway, since she had fallen asleep again, he'd snuck back in the house to leave the presents in our stockings.

Emily was thrilled!  And so happy for both of us.  Angelines had found some cheesy stamp pens for her, but she was obvioulsy much more excited about OUR presents than her own.  What a sweet girl.  It was a true Christmas moment.

I hope your Christmases were merry and bright.  I promise another more newsy post soon.
XO and happy holidays!