Christmas Season 2009

The Christmas Season this year will always be remembered as a year of transition...

For our oldest, Ethan, who is now 12, it's the last year of childhood...soon to be followed by the teen years. And because he's now in middle school, he's no longer involved in all the little kid stuff that goes on at church. Never again will he be our little angel with the tinsel crown, no more dressing up as one of the three wise men, no more children's choir.

And Ethan also really enjoyed the youth group stuff at church, highlighted by a gift exchange which was supposed to be a 'white elephant' affair. This didn't always translate well into the arcane language of the 7th or 8th grade mind, which made the whole thing much funnier. As the kids broke into their cell groups of 8 or 10 people, I saw cheap plastic toys (who knew they made no-name-brand slinkies?) and candy, a mechanical battery-operated crescent wrench, even a used basketball.

For Isaac, 2009 was a season of . He kept his parents running. First, he sang with the Jackson Children's Chorale Choir, which had the opportunity to sing with the Jackson Adult Chorale Choir as they were backed by the Jackson Symphony Orchestra...the whole production was amazing, but the day was packed. The minute the concert was finished, Ethan and I pushed our way frantically through the crowd to find him and haul him to the church so he could change transform into one of the three wise men via the magic of the bath robe. We just barely made it with perhaps two minutes to spare...whew!!!

And then came Gillian. Not quite age 3, she's our handful of joy (more handful than we can manage at times) and she's at a different stage of transition, not quite baby, not quite little kid. My wife and I woke her up from a nap to get her changed as quickly as possible from pajamas to tights and a dress, and again, just made it with about two minutes to spare.

Still sleepy and half in a daze, Gillian walked with the other two year olds down the central aisle of the dark church into the spotlights, all eyes on the children as they were herded into position by adult workers desperately hoping to get them to sit still...and of course, you could feel the smiles of the watching adults, all wondering how successful the whole thing would turn out.

The minute the two year olds were in position, the overhead screen displayed them seated on the steps where they sat...which was discovered by one little girl who was completely delighted to see herself and all her friends on two giant t.v. screens.

And her attention from that point on was completely lost.

But the show must go on, and so it did. Gillian, however, was too exhausted to sing anything, and she ended up first sitting on the steps staring half awake out at the crowd, then watching the kids around her do the motions to "Away In a Manger" which my wife had practiced with her for days.

So glad she had all that practice...so we could watch her sit there and watch everyone else...

Two

“ ‘Snot Weekun!” our 2 year old exclaims impatiently, and her majesty is correct – it, the DVD player is not working…or more accurately, it isn’t working YET because the DVD she wants to watch (which she’s seen at least ten times already) hasn’t loaded yet.

Impatience. Defining hallmark of youth (though we all wish it just developed naturally with age, don’t we?) and no one in our household is more impatient than the princess. When the disc is put into the player it’s supposed to just WORK; not after four seconds. NOW.

She’s like this with many things. When she wants a sippy cup (a ‘baba’, to use her vernacular) thirty seconds is much, much too long to wait for the microwave to heat the milk. But if the glass we use to heat the milk is taken out of the microwave at, say, twenty seconds, well, as crazy as it may sound, SHE KNOWS. “Oh! Nah HOT! Heat-a-up!”

Age two has its bright spots, of course. Christmas will no doubt be amazing this year, perhaps the first one she will remember and definitely the first one where we’ve introduced the word ‘presents’ to her. And we’ve recently gotten video of her watching a Disney DVD. She always laughs hysterically at the same spot in the cartoon, and you can’t help but smile and laugh right along with her.

But how did ‘two’ come to an end so quickly? It feels hard to believe she’s almost three. THREE, for crying out loud, and while I can’t believe I’m saying this, there’s a kind of sadness knowing that in just a couple months, we won’t have a toddler in diapers any more, but instead a third child. A KID.

I’m not complaining by any means. Changing your kid’s diaper when she’s age two is kind of like changing your great Aunt Margaret. You don’t get cutesy little poo like you do with newborns, and it isn’t an experience you look forward to. Having her completely potty trained -- instead of having to change her underwear seven times a day -- will be a huge blessing.


But two is almost completely gone. And it wasn’t so terrible after all; in fact, am I actually going to say this? We’re going to kind of miss two…