Our Christmas Vacation

For Christmas this year, we went to Denver to visit my family. This is the first Christmas I’ve spent at home since 2002, so I was really excited to have a Christmas the way I remember it growing up, complete with Nanaimo bars, sleeping under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve-eve (as we call it), a Christmas program with music and stories on Christmas Eve, new pajamas to open after the Christmas program, and helping stuff our old-fashioned red-courderoy-with-bric-a-brac stockings. I’m happy to say, it was just as wonderful as I remembered.

Lego was quite good. His sleep schedule got messed up pretty badly the night we flew in because we got home at 2:00 a.m. It took him a couple of days to get back on track and to catch up on sleep, so he was cranky on Christmas Day, but he was happy and busy the rest of the week. He loved all the attention, and by the end of the week, he was spontaneously smiling at Grandma if he caught her eye and leaning toward people who weren’t Mommy or Daddy, asking to be held.

My youngest sister is looking more and more like me as she gets older. We have almost the same nose, the same face shape, the same hair, and very similar eyes. She has fuller lips and darker skin, and she’s taller and slightly heavier than I am, but really, the resemblance is remarkable. For much of the trip, Lego would lean toward her if someone else was holding him, only to realize she wasn’t Mommy at the last minute. He would then turn and search for me. It was pretty funny.

One of my goals for this trip was to encourage Lego to eat solid foods more. My mom had bought him some baby food when it was on sale a couple of months ago, and I wanted it to actually be used. So at each meal, Lego sat in his high chair, and I tried to sneak a few spoonfuls in his mouth. He liked some foods more than others (I got about six spoons of bananas in before he refused to eat any more, maybe twelve of sweet potatoes, and two of pears). I actually considered this progress, as he has never eaten so much baby food before.

Then, on Wednesday night, I was trying a cookie my uncle had made. It was a gingersnap made with crystallized ginger, so it was so gingery that it left a spicy aftertaste in your mouth. My youngest sister even said the cookies were too spicy for her. Lego was sitting on my lap as I ate it, and he looked interested. I figured I’d let him suck on it a bit if he wanted to. I’m to the point where I’ll let him try anything he’s interested in trying because he’s almost never interested. He tasted the cookie and started sucking hard on it and chewing it a bit with his little teeth. He ate quite a bit of it. Of all the things a baby would think tasted good, that spicy gingersnap was not one I would have guessed. He sure liked it, though. He also liked the pizza crust we gave him and the sweet pea pod he chewed in the airport yesterday.

I have two siblings on missions, one in Ontario and one in the West Indies. We got to talk to each of them for about forty minutes on Monday, which was awesome. It’s been so long since I’ve heard their voices! They both sounded happy and just like themselves.

Of course we all got sick while on vacation; it’s just that time of year, and flying adds to the likelihood of catching something. Oh, well.

 All in all, we had a great time, and I’m missing everyone now that we’re back.