Christmas 2008

I have to admit, I'm struggling today. It's Monday, Christmas is over, and I should be ordering my life into some semblance of normalcy. I thought (foolishly) that I'd breeze through today, able to clean up the remants of Christmas morning that still linger around my house because the girls would be so busy playing with all their new things. No need to plan an outing! No need to pile everyone into the car and head somewhere to burn off steam! I'll just sip coffee and stack the cardboard boxes in a tall tower by the back door. Instead, I spent the day accomplishing things in 2-minute increments in between breaking up fights over the new things. Nothing new there.

Three times today, Annie caught me taking down stockings or packing away the nativity scene and had a small breakdown. "Mommy, I want it to still be Christmas!" she wailed. I know how she feels. Most of me is annoyed that our now-droopy Christmas tree still stands in our front room simply because there hasn't really been an evening to take it down (and I refuse to let the girls "help" with putting away the ornaments and lights); a small part of me is sad to see it all go. I drive past outdoor Christmas lights and know that the winter landscape will be so bleak and dreary once they are down. I miss the sounds of Christmas music in our house during the day and in the car when we drive to the gym. I remember begging my parents to leave the tree up for just one more day.

I can see, too, how every Christmas is going to blend into the others, so that in twenty or thirty years, it will be impossible to remember what we did, where we were, how it was. We'll have our pictures, thank goodness, but before I forget, I want to note that this was the Christmas when:

-Annie wore a gold sparkly dress she picked out herself and Jemma wore a plaid taffeta dress that made her look so grown up.

-The girls set out cookies and milk for Santa on the floor next to the fireplace and ate the crumbs he left for breakfast the next morning.

-Annie woke up early, as usual, but didn't come out of her room. When we went in to get her, she said she hadn't wanted to come out because she never heard the reindeer on the roof, so she was afraid that Santa hadn't had time to come yet.

-Out of all her presents in her stocking and under the tree, Jemma would absolutely not let go of three small multicolored Twizzlers leftover from Halloween that I threw in her stocking at the last minute. "Hold them, have them," she kept saying, until we finally just let her eat them at 7:30 a.m. Later, when we asked her what Santa brought her, she said, "Candy canes" (which is what she thought they were) and when we asked her what else, she said, "Cheerios," which was totally untrue.

-Annie's favorite presents were the new Baby Alive doll from Aunt Lisa and Uncle Trevor (which she named "Ormandy" and later changed to "Elizabeth Ormandy"); the big dollhouse she and Jemma got from my parents; the Ariel doll head from Santa; new swim goggles; the book Madeleine; red dress-up shoes from Aunt Bonnie.

-Jemma loved her new Baby Alive doll, too (named "Baby Marta"), as well as a Dora tent, princess slippers, the Curious George movie, and Cinderella figurines.

-We spent Christmas Eve in Holland with my parents, woke up with the girls at our house for a cozy breakfast and presents, then left for Petoskey before 10:00 a.m. on Christmas Day.

-We were able to connect with some old, good friends from dental school for spontaneous sledding and lunch while in Petoskey. Theron and Jennifer's daughter, Carolyn, and Annie were instant friends, sitting next to each other at the restaurant and grinning ear to ear while saying things like "I love Tinkerbell!" and "Your little sister is cute."

-We drove home two days later through some intense fog, wind, and rain to find almost all our snow gone and the thermometer on the car reading 56 degrees.

There is just nothing else as magical as Christmas morning with little children. And even though it's already a blur, already a memory, I tried to treasure every single second this year because there are going to be so few years when they really, truly believe in the magic of it all.