Merry Christmas from the Overlords

Christmas with the Overlords was busy but fun. They went and saw Santa (while I was home sick):

...after which Chloë told me solemnly, "If Santa Tom comes to our house in the dark, he will be surprised."

We baked cookies:

I'd suggested that we make gingerbread men and put gumdrop buttons on them, but it was Chloë's idea to make one for each person coming to Christmas dinner, with a letter to designate whose was whose (there were a lot of Ms: Maia, Mimi, Mama, Memaw, and Matt) and red-hot eyes, nose, and...um...bow tie, I think. She did the red-hots and piped some of the icing for the bow ties, and was very proud of herself. So was I.

And, of course, we opened lots of presents:

(Notice the pure joy on Maia's sweet face on seeing that they both have their own packets of what they've been calling "minties," mint M&Ms.)

(I made the sweater. Mom sewed on the buttons.)

The girls got a good haul: dolls, necklaces, sweater for Maia and mittens for Chloë, stuffed animals, books, baking stuff and a space puzzle for Chloë, a dump truck for Maia. Chloë also got a training laptop from Mom (which I helped pick out) that we upgraded tonight to a LeapPad, because the laptop we chose turned out to have some issues.

Then family came over for dinner and more presents, and the girls got into their Christmas dresses, which Chloë in particular professed to love. They liked Eric's yams and the green beans, and the apple pie, and their cousin Raegan two-fisted cookies when I made the mistake of putting the plate too low. It was a good Christmas.

Merry Chwitmat!

We hope your Christmas (or other winter holiday) was as happy as ours. We spent Christmas Eve with some friends (and some excellent pasta sauce) and drove home the long way, looking at the Christmas lights. Chloë picked a place to hang her stocking, and in the morning we went down to see if it had been filled. It had.

She worked hard that morning: she opened her presents, plus Maia's, plus Eric's and mine. After every one she said, "I want to open more presents!"

But she was happy to play when we told her there were no more. Maia enjoyed it too. We went to the girls' cousins' grandmother's for Christmas dinner, and had more family over for cider and cookies that night. "Chwitmat id not quite ober yet," Chloë said that night, and she was right: we finished up with Christmas at the mothers' this evening, with dinner and presents and pie.

She and Maia both got quite a haul this Christmas: books, toys, stuffed animals, clothes, a rocking horse, Duplos, several electronic gadgets (a tablet for Chlo--presumably, as Eric said, the Speak & Spell of 2011. I don't even have a tablet), and the best prize of all, a Play Hut. She and Maia have been crawling in and out of it ever since we opened it up, sometimes with their other toys, sometimes not. Chloë's asked me to go in, but only my front half fits. But it's just the right size for the girls.

We had a really lovely Christmas this year, so lovely it surprised me, somehow. We worked hard for it, but it was worth it. We've seen friends and family, and shared treats and gifts with loved ones, and enjoyed spending time together. And with our toys. As Chloë's been saying to everyone, Merry Chwitmat!

Getting into the Christmas spirit

Cookie Day was a great success. Chloë and Addie helped cut out sugar cookies and then decorate them. They enjoyed the sprinkles especially. We emptied one bottle and almost ran out of four others (though with two we also used some for snickerdoodles). Chloë was enthusiastic in her decorating attempts, as you can see:

We divided up the cookies between Addie, Mimi, and us. "Cookies for Grandpa and Halmoni," Chloë reminded me, so we put some of ours in the freezer to send later. (There's still a week for the mail to run, right?)

Tuesday we put up the tree, and Wednesday we decorated it. Chloë adored this. She loved when we turned the lights off to see the lit-up tree in the dark, and had great fun hanging "omerats." We'd hand her an ornament and hoist her up on the table and help her place it. "Another one!" she would cry immediately. Then she'd say, "Where mouse?" or "Where my picture?" and we'd have to hunt for the mouse ornament or baby's-first-Christmas ornament she'd put on a few turns back. We had to stop her before the tree collapsed under the weight of the ornaments. It's only a little tree. Though when Eric said that, Chloë immediately said "It is not a little tree," the same way she says, "I am not a little girl," when we call her that by mistake. We told her to wait until she sees Memaw's.

And last night when I came home, Chloë was munching on something. "Mommy I am eatin' a fruit bar," she told me. We buy these from Target (they have a whole selection: fruit strips, bites, ropes, and yogurt-drizzled bars. Chloë likes them all) and I knew Eric had taken them out there to get a few things and to Bed, Bath & Beyond to get a new candy thermometer, since I had ruined my fourth this year trying to make fudge. (That is, I've ruined four kitchen thermometers, but the first three were in the service of finding the right amount of water to use in the bottle warmer to scald Maia's milk. The fourth I ruined earlier this week on my fourth attempt at fudge. If you are so fortunate as to get fudge from us this year, know that a lot of time and effort went into it. If you aren't, don't be surprised.)

I said, "Oh good," or something similar, and put away the milk and my lunch bag, purse, and pump. Meanwhile Chloë pointed at the BB&B bag still on the floor. "Mommy we went shopping," she said. "We bought slippers. We bought a thermometer." I made appropriate mmm-hmm? noises, noting that first item but hoping Eric hadn't noticed, and got us all upstairs to change my clothes (I'm the only one who's required for this operation, but it generally ends up being all of us, or at least three of us, in the bedroom while I'm doing it anyway). In the bedroom we talked of other things, but Chloë was quite interested in her day. "We went shopping," she said. "We bought you some slippers."

"Did you?" I said. "I bet Daddy wishes you hadn't told me that."

"I do," Eric grumbled. This is why I shopped for Eric's gifts online this year.

Squiggles

Chloë can draw circles now! And squiggles! She's been good at lines for a while, and would occasionally scrawl across the paper and proclaim it a plane, or a cloud, but when I ask her to draw a circle, or a triangle, she's said, "I can not." But the other day she was doing actual loops and intentional zigzags. She gave me the picture, but I forgot to bring it into work. I'll have to do it tomorrow.

(In all honesty, I don’t particularly admire the pictures she makes. I'm glad she enjoys them and I'm glad that this developmental step has occurred, but the pictures themselves don't move me and I don't actually want one up in my cubicle. That's normal, right?)

She's been very keen on the Christmas decorating. "Mama, want to decorate?" she said hopefully all weekend, even after I told her we were all done. She loved putting the berry picks into the garland on the staircase, and "helping" me put up the snowflake lights. Now she wants them on all the time. She was happy when we picked out our tree from Andersons (a little tabletop tree, which is exactly what it's going to be with the crawling baby and all) and is excited to put ornaments on it.

Unfortunately that won't happen until Tuesday, but that's because today is Cookie Day, when Mimi and Addie and Rae come over to make cookies until dough oozes out our ears. Hmm, maybe I shouldn't say that when toddlers are involved. Anyway, she likes cookies and she likes her family and she likes baking with Mama, so it should be a good night. We're going to make sugar cookies with sprinkles. Usually I make the type of cutout cookie that needs to be iced, but she's not that good at squiggles and circles yet.