And how was our Christmas? Did she get it?

The holidays this year were a bit crazy. I got sick right as my winter break was starting. Literally, the Sunday night before my first day off I got hit with a killer cough. It was like my body was saying, "Hey, aren't you supposed to be stressed out with planning right now? Oh no? You're on vacation? Well, let's see if we can find another way to add a little stress to your system!" 

But other than that, things went really well. My mom was in town starting on Monday evening and then my Dad came into town on Christmas day. My mom and I went to the Science Museum for more "butterfly exposure therapy" for Greta. Poor kid. She really, really likes butterflies. Just not when they are too close. 

On Christmas Eve, before I put Greta to bed, I showed her the empty stockings. We looked inside hers and saw that it was empty and I told her that sometimes special things happen on Christmas Eve and that tomorrow there might be something inside her stocking. On Christmas morning, I introduced Greta to the contents of her stocking -- a mandarin orange and a booklet of stickers. She was excited about the stickers and gently pushed away the mandarin orange. (I found this very funny, since she loves oranges, but I guess maybe it was her way of saying she didn't want to eat it right now.) 

I think opening her stocking was fun and worth it, even at her young age. Over the next few days, though, she occasionally has pointed excitedly at the empty stocking and indicated that she wants to take it down and look inside. This has made me feel a little guilty for raising her expectations that, at any moment, it might be filled with treats again. It's a little hard to explain to a 21-month old that she has to wait a whole year for that trick to be performed again. But maybe it's a sign that it's time to take down the stockings and put them away for next year. 

As far as her other education on the topic of Christmas, I used a pad of stickers to help explain the nativity story to her. I explained what was going on in each step as I stuck the different major characters on a piece of paper. Stickers are a great way to interact with Greta. They provide a visual aid for whatever you're talking about, and she's just generally fascinated by any information that comes in sticker form. After I'd told the Christmas story once, she wanted to use the next sheet of the same stickers again, and so she got a second rendition of the Christmas story on the back of the same sheet of paper. Then she wanted to use her other pad of stickers -- the secular stickers -- but I didn't have another piece of paper handy and so we had to just add to the nativity scene. Suddenly, there were snowflakes, polar bears, Santa Claus and stockings at the birth of Jesus. So . . . yeah . . . I may have botched that lesson a bit. Oh well, she's 21 months. I have time to clear up any confusion. 

I have pictures that go with this post, but I am having trouble getting them off my phone. We'll see if I can add them later.