Last night Christmas left our house in two hours of frenzied packing and cleaning. We kicked its ass to the garage for another year.

We put our tree up the third week in November, so it was time to go. We never got much of an enthusiastic response from Lucy over tree, although she did start "Heeee!"-ing at it after a few weeks. This morning when we came downstairs and the living room was back to normal (thankgod) she didn’t notice.

She is, however, giddy over her new toys. This is a post unto itself, but right now she’s on the floor with Eric licking the plastic frog banjo on her Leap Frog LeapStart Learning Table (from Nana and Grandpa) while banging Quatro blocks (from Uncle Stinky) together. Earlier the Weebles (from Eirinn) were belting out a tune by bashing the Little Tikes Piano (from Daddy).

Eric is home until next Thursday, which is wonderful. After days of family, it’s so nice to be encased in our house together, just the four of us. Normally Eric gets up first thing to change Lucy and bring her to bed to nurse, but I’ve been doing it so he gets a break. And he’s been feeding Lucy her breakfast while I surf and snuggle with Spencer (his furry head fits under the wireless card in the laptop just so).

"I’m almost 28 years old and I still have a hard time sleeping on Christmas Eve."

"I know. I love that about you. I hope you’re 70 and still excited."

"I will if you keep buying me good stuff."

On Christmas Eve night I played Santa for the first time. I laid out Eric and his mom’s stockings, plus Lucy’s play house and big gifts from Gramie. It was totally surreal doing that for my daughter. It felt like an out of body experience, that I’d go to bed and still hear my parents creeping around laying out MY stuff. I don’t know if I’m ready for this…

One of Lucy’s favourite gifts is the soft, clear plastic container the so-cool farm friends bowling set (from Auntie Shannon and Uncle Ted) came in. She likes to eat the plastic zipper slide. Eric plays Space Baby with her by putting it over her head (it smartly has hole in the bottom).

You know how sometimes you can’t help how you feel, even if you know it’s irrational? In a disguised, name altering manner: these people who our family spoils didn’t buy Lucy a gift, yet bought all the other children in the room a gift. I know it’s selfish and dumb to expect a gift, but I guess since all the other kids were going to get gifts, we were all excited to be the youngest gift-getters and get pics of Lucy opening one at her first Christmas. We didn’t open the camera. One family member is spitting nails mad and hurt over it.

Christmas drama. Gee-ya!

Isn’t it funny how you get so much stuff, wonder where the hell you’re going to put it all, then your house swallows it up?

I did not kill anyone with the turkey. Dinner was a success and people seemed happy and slighltly bloated from all the (good?) food. Excellent.

Did I mention Lucy and I were super sick all through the holidays? Freaking cold bugs. So much snot. I never thought I’d get so much pleasure over picking crusties off another person’s nose so they could, you know, breathe. The worst part was that I could not, physically, drink wine from Dec. 23-last night. Another holiday season without the sauce, dammit. Watch out, New Year’s…

We are so grateful for everyone’s generosity to Lucy and our family. It wasn’t the gifts themselves that showed the love, but the pure delight on people’s faces watching Lucy open presents and sharing her first Christmas with us. That was the best gift of all.

How were your holidays?

Possibly related posts:

1. 1 year
2. The rhyming sucks, but you get the point: Merry Christmas!
3. Merry Christmas
4. Christmas in pics, or 21 photos until the meltdown!
5. 1 year, a whole new world: Happy Birthday, Lucy!