Well, now, today is going to be a very busy Christmas day. So I’ll dash off a note wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. If you have to travel to see family, be safe and arrive secure. Enjoy the company of family and friends. And if you need a reminder about what this holiday means, perhaps I should let Linus remind you.
Sean also would like to pass on greetings to you. Daniel is actually the one that started doing it spontaneously one day, but he refuses to do it on camera. So Sean will substitute for the wishes.
We went and saw Legendary Santa this morning. Legendary Santa is a bit of a tradition in Richmond (since 1936), and we’ve tried to take the kids most years. This year has been a bit hectic, so we got ourselves a morning appointment (yes, it cost a few $$) to let the boys see Santa. We were curious about how Sean and Daniel, in particular, would react to Santa in person. They have a definite awareness of Santa now. Whenever they see an image of Santa, they know who he is and call out his name.
Santa largely has the same entrance that he always does. And the wait in line was fine — no apprehension from the boys, even as we walked up.
However, once we put Sean and Daniel on Santa’s lap and walked away (to allow a picture to be taken), the screaming started. Nope, they wanted nothing of Santa up close. We got an okay picture out of it, and Will got to tell Santa what he wanted. And when it was time to go, Sean and Daniel both actually waved and said good-bye to Santa. I guess being safely with Mommy and Daddy eases their fears and allows them to interact with Santa.
We also have a couple of pictures of the boys in their outfits from visiting Santa today. Christmas season almost is complete now. The shopping is done, the wrapping and baking is almost done, and Sean has already found one minor present and ripped the wrapping paper off. The celebrations can now begin.
You saw Will singing yesterday. Sean and Daniel also showed off their budding music skills yesterday. Actually, Sean showed talent in blowing a whistle that he’d never had before. It took about four tries before he got a random sound and got all excited. (Unfortunately, that’s not on video.) But he was able to repeat it fairly quickly, and after that, it was just a lot of whistling.
Daniel, on the other hand, got very frustrated with it. He started trying before Sean, but couldn’t get it. And when Sean could make sounds, but he couldn’t, that really got him upset. He did make the whistle sound a few times, but it was essentially random noise where he could repeat the blowing out to sound it again.
Sorry, this isn’t anything fancy. But Kellie did celebrate her birthday yesterday, though the cake had to wait for today. I think this one was at least a moderate success. We’re very lucky to have around her patience, love and understanding.
(Pictures of her are somewhat lacking, so this one from Central Park at Thanksgiving this year will have to do. She has successfully avoided getting a lot of photos taken. That, plus we lost 75% of the past year’s photos in the hard drive crash.)
She does get us to sing happy birthday again to her today. So, happy birthday again. It really doesn’t make you another year older just because we sing it on the next day.
Sean has always enjoyed gazing at reflective surfaces, but today, he took it to a new level of self-awareness.
He was the one who initiated the self-gazing at first. We just didn’t catch it on video, with him holding his spoon, at first. So, yes, it was stages a little, but we didn’t feed him the answers.
