Christmas #1

Lucky us. We get to celebrate Christmas 3 times this year! We decided that instead of packing all of our Christmas gifts to each other (Paul, Jill and Kate) and traveling with them, we'd have a little Christmas celebration at home before we left. It felt like the real day (so much that I almost missed my doctor's appointment. Who has doctor's appointments on Christmas?) and was a lot of fun to watch Kate open her presents.

She was really excited to open her presents and I expected her to tear through them. Instead she would open one, get excited and want to play with it right then. So she'd have to pause and spend 20 minutes playing with the new toy (like her crayons in the picture below) and then decide she was ready to open another one when she was finished. The whole process probably took 4 hours and she didn't even have that many presents! It was a nice way to spend a relaxing morning.

Christmas has been a lot more exciting now that Kate is starting to understand what it's all about. She has loved seeing all the lights, listening to "Frosty", looking at the Christmas tree and presents and playing with her little baby Jesus in the nativity set. Children is magical for kids and I'm excited for all the Christmas' to come!

Enjoying...

the snow we got in Connecticut a few days ago. And enjoying that it didn't keep us inside for too long!

tea party

Kate attended her first tea party this week. Not just any tea party, but a teddy bear tea party. It was quite the affair. Despite wanting to keep eating more and more cupcakes and standing on the chair at moments, she was quite the little lady.

this week's happenings

These weekly catch-up posts may be what this blog has become for the next little while as the size of this babe increases and my energy level decreases. Despite me running a little slower lately, things have stayed busy and we're enjoying this holiday season.

This week Paul and I had the unique opportunity to attend a lecture and discussion given by Tony Blair on Faith and Globalization. He's been a "celebrity" on the Yale campus this semester and being able to hear him speak is one of the perks of being a part of this community. His takeaway message was that faith has power to either divide or unite people and it's our responsibility to make sure that the latter is the case. The candor of his speech was impressive, as well as his sense of humor. The talk ended with a question from the President of Yale, asking what he thought of his depiction in the movie "The Queen". He answered by telling a story (in his thick British accent) about one of his weekly meetings with the Queen. He sat down with her and she said:

"There is a film.

I don't think I'm going to see it.

Are you?"

And of course he answered, "No."

So you probably had to be there for it to sound funny, but it was.

Kate finally got to see Santa Clause up close and personal this week and I think all the anticipation was too much for her to handle. After being excited all day to see Santa, she realized she didn't like him as much as she thought she did. Maybe next year.
It's also looking a lot more like Christmas around here. Shopping is almost done, the baking seems constant and we love the sounds of Christmas music. The excitement of pulling all the ornaments off the tree seems to be fading and we are just enjoying each other and this time of year. Paul wraps up his finals this week with a slight feeling of sadness (i think) of another semester gone by too quickly and we try to ward off the too frequent question of our "after graduation plans" because we are having a baby first, right?

A few things making me happy today...

Recalling an experience I had earlier this week with Kate at the New Haven tree lighting celebration. They had a little ride for kids, the kind where they sit in a little train or boat and it goes around in a circle. It went around pretty fast and they were only strapped in with a little buckle so I assumed Kate would be too afraid to ride it. As soon as Kate saw her friend Peter on the ride our conversation went like this:
"Train, mama, train."
"Yeah, see Peter on the train?"
"Train, my turn."
"You want to ride the train Kate? Are you sure? You have to go all by yourself, mommy can't go with you."
"Yeah! Excited!"
"And it goes fast and you have to go all by yourself. Are you sure?"
"Train! Excited!"

We waited in line for a few minutes and I kept waiting for her to back out. I was sure as soon as we got up there and I walked away she would cry and change her mind. Nope. No hesitation at all. Then I was afraid as soon as the train jolted off, she would get scared and start crying. No. She LOVED it! She squealed so loud and laughed the entire way around and around. She was sad when her turn was over. I keep remembering those squeals and it's still making me very happy.
This self portrait I attempted to take earlier today and the little girl inside that bump. Er, mountain?

The snow we woke up to this morning. Dead trees look much more beautiful covered with snow.

This picture. It's on the desktop of our computer and it makes me smile every time I look at it.

The Christmas tree display we saw last night. And the good food we ate afterward. Kate surprised us with her new love of chicken curry and garlic nan.

What is making you happy today?