Tis the Season

We always wait until Remembrance Day is over to slowly inch our way toward Christmas prep. Our Christmas lights are up and Talia is head-over-heels in love with Santa. She doesn't understand why he's going to bring her presents, or how he changed from being the ratty chew-toy in Bert's bed to being the awesome glowing dude at the front door, but she is all in, anyway. Here we are, watching her personalized video from Santa with our matching curly bedheads this morning.

So Talia's enthusiasm for Santa and all things Christmasy is making us all catch the Christmas spirit quickly this year! And our snowstorm this week has helped, as well. It never seems like Christmastime until there is snow on the ground. Rainer has a rule about only playing Christmas music as of December 1st, but we have moved the date up this year and are enjoying Raine Family Dance Parties to Christmas carols (with alarming regularity, truth be told.) I've started to pick up a few things and we hope to get the bulk of our shopping done this Saturday. We've decided to forego gifts for the adults this year in both sides of the family, since it is really all about the kids, so that cuts down in our brainstorming and shopping considerably.

Talia is coming along nicely with her skates, we didn't make it to the rink today but she has been practicing walking around the house wearing them (with guards on) and is even brave enough to walk short distances by herself now.

Declan is starting to talk at the ripe old age of 9.5 months - he says Da-da, ta (when playing a game of ta-ta, which involves him giving you whatever is in his hands and laughing his head off), yeah (when you ask him a question such as "do you want some more supper?" or "are you playing with [whatever he's playing with] ?") and he even says Tal sometimes when playing with his big sister. Still no inclination toward movement. He is perfectly content to let his legs dangle in his jumper/exersaucer/or walker and be pulled around by his sister, or occasionally he'll use his hands to pull himself along the furniture when he's in his wheels. I'm sure the start of his speech is just the next step in conning us all into doing his bidding, while he remains as sedentary as ever. Smarter than all of us, and not even a year old.

Today I printed my Mom's annual Christmas letter and ordered her Christmas cards, and it has inspired me to send our own family update this year....... maybe......... if I can get my act together in time! We also ordered our community calendar - we had to add Declan this year and the guy doing the order repeated the spelling about 3 times - I feel there is about a 20% chance of our little guy's Irish name appearing correctly dans le calendrier francais. (Sacre bleu! What is with Blogger only randomly accepting french accents or symbols when it feels like it??? For shame, Blogger, for shame.)

I'm even starting to think of our Christmas menu as we're hosting this year. We've decided that our kids should have memories of waking up on Christmas morning here, in their home. It seemed like a really good idea until I realized that has just doomed me to ALWAYS COOKING CHRISTMAS DINNER. Ah, well. That way I can make whatever I like and don't have to be polite about eating someone else's weird, I mean, special traditional favourite. (I'm lookin' at you, Rainer.)