Sunday, January 22, 2017

Christmas 2016

I'll bet you thought I had abandoned you entirely didn't you? Well I came close to it....not deliberately of course but because life simply gets in the way.
Obviously it's been months since I've even thought about this blog. Many things have happened...some good, some not so good...life is like that. So I'll pick up at Christmas because that's an easy place to start.

Christmas was good, fine, ok....whatever. Most Christmas's are whatever these days simply because they can't compare to the Christmas's I had as a kid. Nothing compares to anything that happened when I was a kid. But then again, who said we are supposed to be comparing these events anyway? Probably best not to do that.

So this year was much the same as other years with one small difference. Shay is here now and she cannot be ignored....not that you'd want to anyway. She is adorable!

I had to stop myself from spending way too much money on Shay. She is barely over a year old (I do not know the exact number of months she is...I'm not that kind of grandma.) and will not remember much of Christmas yet anyway. Besides that she has a definite love affair going on with boxes. That old joke about kids playing with the boxes and ignoring the gift...it's perfectly true. I have seen this baby go nuts over the box her car seat came in. That box was her best friend for weeks. I tried to keep this in mind while buying Christmas presents for her. Not that I was looking for special boxes for her but I was trying to control my spending by remembering no matter what it is it will probably not make a big impact on her at this age....unless of course it's a cool box. So I got her some clothes because she considers herself  a very stylish baby. And I got her a few educational toys....small cardboard books that little hands can hold comfortably; chunky piece puzzles for little ones; block puzzles for young children and the like.
 All of these gifts had to be opened for her as she has not yet realized how the whole wrapping paper ripping process is built right into the gift giving event. Either that or she was bored by the paper tearing part. I don't know. But eventually she had received all her gifts and was entirely underwhelmed by them....not a decent box in the whole lot.

Shay's favorite gift was a fuzzy chair that has a dogs face on it. I don't know who gave it to her (she has so many admirers) but she loved it. She spent most of her day diving face first into it to hug it; sitting on it and watching events around her; 'reading' her books while sitting in it and then bringing toys to line up around the chair while she sat in it. Adorable to watch of course. I wish I had bought that chair.

My Christmas was made better by the fact that Shay was there. She is always the best part of every event that she's a part of. And as a special Christmas gift I was treated to the following pictures taken by my son a little while after Christmas.

There is nothing better than receiving a Baby in a Box. I'm putting that on my Christmas list from now on!