Christmas blog

- My parents came down, and for Jack and Kate it was like they'd never been away. Jack showed Baba his Jets players mural he'd drawn. He had Nana read him the book adaptation of Charlie Brown Christmas, and impressed her by reading a couple of pages himself. Kate wanted to hold Nana's hand as we walked outside.

- We went to church, which had great singing and kind sentiments and beautiful flowers. It was a little long and late for the kids; Jack drew in the activity book he was given, but after finishing all the puzzles he elected to draw a series of Tic Tac Toe boards and convince us to play with him. Kate restlessly traveled from one end of the bench to the other, finally sitting next to Nana. Then Jack sat next to Nana, and there was a brief scuffle over who got to sit next to her until I asked Baba to slide closer to me, and they each affixed themselves to a side. She threw me a look of helplessness at first, then contentment; I think she and Kate were chatting at one point, perhaps about the flowers. I took both kids to the bathroom during the service. At the end, when we all held candles, Jack got a turn to hold one this year. He was a little nervous but when he saw he could do it he had a little smile on his face. It glowed a little, probably from the candlelight.

- We got home late, and since we still had to do letters to Santa (Jack made a nice picture of Santa on his note) and wash up for bed and I had to read Twas the Night before Christmas, it was a late one. Nobody got to bed early, but at least I didn't have to wrap presents or build an art table in the playroom this year. I think the kids were still awake close to 10, and Jack came in at 4 a.m. and maybe one other time. I had an image from A Christmas Story where the younger brother was sleeping under the tree hugging his toy blimp or whatever and thought that would probably be Jack later in the day. (It wasn't, but he was pretty beat.)

- Emily woke up early and went down and made coffee cake. And coffee. The kids were bouncing off the walls but I got them to hang out on the stairs...they kept wanting to peek around, very excited, but they were mostly good. Finally we turned them loose and Jack grabbed the Pokemon Ball toy first, which he is now completely unenthused by. He discovered the T-Rex pillow pet second and loves the thing. And I've hid his microscope under the couch until we can look at it carefully without losing all its little pieces in the chaos of the day or two after Christmas. Kate loves her Doodle Bear and Snow White princess doll; credit to Kate, who consistently for a month named those two things as the things she most wanted.

- I had this idea we'd go slow and careful with the presents, but naturally that's not how things worked out. They were always more interested in the wrapped present across the room than the one they had just unwrapped, which I think is an interesting statement about kids perhaps or maybe people in general. But everyone was really happy with everything and when the presents were finally unwrapped it seemed like they could probably play with them for days without stopping. As I write this two days later I have to bring out things and remind them about them, of course, but that works too.

- Mostly the kids spent the afternoon playing downstairs with the new Wii gaming system. Jack is really into it, making me wonder why I worried briefly he wouldn't be. Emily and I decided we could basically have given him nothing else. Emily kicked some tail on Just Dance 3 the other morning, and I'm planning on setting some track records on Mario Kart. You know, when I get a turn anyway.

The problem with writing these blogs two days later is I forget the little things, but I know that they were the best. One that I do remember is getting a book from Emily -- a book of this blog, all the way from Day 1 through last week or so. It's awesome.

Another came this morning, when we thanked Jack for giving up his bedroom so Nana and Baba could sleep there. He looked at us in confusion. "Well of COURSE I did. You TOLD me too. I didn't want to get GROUNDED."