Christmas

Christmas didn’t come too early.  The girls didn’t wake up until nearly 8am.  I, however, woke up numerous times.  First we found our stockings that Santa hid in our office/playroom.  Samantha is much more of a “seeker” this year.  I was last to find my stocking, Santa was extra tricky for me.

After playing with our stocking goodies for a while we moved into the living room for the big “Santa presents”.  Samantha got a princess bike.  She has the lowest of the height requirements and she, unfortunately doesn’t quite know how to get on and off and ended up falling over when trying to climb on by putting all her weight on a  pedal.  Maybe in the spring it will go a bit better. Clara got a little kitchen that makes sounds.  Clara kept trying to use her kitchen to stand herself up but it wasn’t big enough to support her weight so she kept falling over.  And thus began our Christmas theme…. falls…

Stephen’s big gifts this year was a set of pneumatic nailers, and a set of disc brakes for his bike.  I got a new 50mm primes lens for the camera and a Nativity set (afterwards I found out that as a 2nd Christmas gift my mom was sending me her old Bosch Universal Mixer yay!)

I tried to give the girls something handmade this year for Christmas (not a total handmade Christmas… but at least one gift not from a store).  I crocheted them both hats, and I made Samantha a stuffed dinosaur.  Meet Buddy from “Dinosaur Train”.  I made him by tracing a Teddy Bear I have.  I was pretty surprised how he turned out.  I did learn that Terry cloth is not a nice fabric to work with.  If I ever do this again, I’ll use more of a knit or fleece… non-fraying fabric.

  

Samantha playing with her new sticker book

Mommy and Clara

Clara, taken with the new 50mm lens with a very wide open aperture

After our own breakfast and celebration, we headed over to Stephen’s parents house where everyone was congregating.  Clara got to show off her new hat, and Samantha had a good time playing with her cousin’s new toys.

 

All in all, Christmas was great and we felt very blessed.  We were also greatly blessed when Clara was not injured as she managed to sneak past all of the adults in the kitchen at Grandma & Grandpa Smith’s house and tumbled down the entire flight of stairs to the basement (wood stairs to a concrete floor).  She’s young enough that her bones have not yet hardened and she intuitively tucked her head.  She was scared and shocked but calmed down (it took me about the same amount of time to calm down all the while thinking I’m the worst mother ever).  We put arnica on her head and the next morning there wasn’t even a bruise.  I have noticed that she’s MUCH more cautious around stairs now.