Jack's Christmas

I went in to get Jack, while Emmy went downstairs to turn on the tree lights, the Santa and the Sleigh outdoor display (which I of course hooked up inside, since we live over our garage and I don't don't have a ladder), and all the other various lights I connected to set the scene. And make coffee, seeing as it was 6:15 a.m. and all. As I brought him downstairs, I explained to him that Santa had come last night and brought presents. "Yeahh..!" he said. "Santa!"

I set him down at the bottom of the stairs and he headed for the living room. Santa had thoughtfully taken the train tracks out of their box, set them up, and added all the various features -- tree, Sir Topham Hatt, trains, stop sign. Jack went right to it, oblivious to all the new presents underneath the tree and his other unwrapped gift, a musical band box with different instruments. "Trains!" He spent the next 10 minutes or so playing with those, while Emmy and I slugged down coffee. Then we each opened a present, and introduced Jack to his band box. He showed some interest in the various things, of course particularly in the ones that make the most noise, and then returned to his trains.

Then chaos set in. Ian, Cathy, and the rest of the Rosenfelds -- Reanna, Lyndsay, Stacey -- came over, and the girls were immediately at the tree. I think I blinked and in that time all the presents had been distributed by the twins, there was a flurry of paper in the air, and suddenly everything was open and it was impossible to walk anywhere. Jack played with their toys, they played with Jack's toys, I spent some time trying to open this realistic looking monkey that made noises and said ooh ooh ah ah and so forth, finally got it open, and gradually came to feel it wasn't quite as frightening as I thought initially. Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Linda were on hand as well, and there was much in the way of food, hors douvres (probably misspelled), drink, all that stuff. Ian set up the Mousetrap game we'd given Reanna, which was great fun for everyone, including Jack, who had little interest in the game but liked making the ball-bearing roll down the staircase.

At some point we let Jack go upstairs with his cousins, and they were going to color with markers. I'm not sure I need to explain where this plan went awry, but merely telling the twins to make sure Jack only colored on the paper was, of course, not good enough. No, instead they came down and notified us that Jack had started coloring all over his rug, rocking chair, etc. And so he had. I'm well aware that he'll do worse in the future so I won't complain too much.

A good dinner was had by all, nice work Emmy, and more playing with toys occurred. One of the twins -- no, I can never really tell, I try, but what can I say -- had some fun with Jack's Backyardigans Colorforms set, creating quite a nice scene with all of them in their pirate uniforms and so forth. I played with a wooden car Jack got that had some very cool craftsmanship. And read Jack some of his new books, including one with pigs and Dragon's Merry Christmas, which he showed his appreciation for by saying "Again."

His favorite toys -- on that certain day, but it changes a lot -- were a bucket of plastic food and a wooden crate of plastic fruit. And a plastic pizza. I don't know that I really understand why kids like imitation food, but the Rosenfeld girls do and so does Jack. He made me a waffle and pizza sandwich, which I pretended to eat, and then he cut slices of his little plastic pizza, and we ate those. "Here, Daddy," he'd say, with the same tone he'd use when handing me a apple skin after he'd eaten the apple out of it. "Here, Daddy."

I put him to bed that night by reading him his new books, and singing him his favorite songs (Rudolph, Frosty, Santa, Twinkle Twinkle, Edelweiss), and letting myself out of the room. Down to the living room and the Christmas Tree and Emmy and a glass of wine, and the knowledge that it would be Christmas again some time, and maybe next year it would seem to move more in slow motion, rather than in fast-forward, like far too many things with Jack tend to do.