A January Christmas Recap

I blinked and it is almost mid-January. Seems a bit pointless now to be talking about Christmas, if I'm honest. All the decorations are down and packed away for another year and all I can think about now is Emily's birthday. January will never again be an anti-climatic month. I didn't expect it, but I was far more eager to de-Christmas the house this year - and there can only be one reason. Emily's birthday is even more important to me now than Christmas is. I never thought I'd say it and yet there it is. I've typed it out. It's true.

But for posterity's sake, Christmas was perfect. Emily was thrilled to finally be allowed at the gifts and she even loved opening her stocking. I had thoroughly expected her to only be interested in the paper, but no... she was frustrated at the paper. Because it was keeping her away from the goodies hidden underneath it.

Her stocking contained a Waybuloo DVD, a set of hairbands (her hair is growing fast!), two packets of Milky Buttons (she'd never tasted chocolate before Christmas, ignoring the time she stole a bite off my KitKat but that's another story), some bath toys, a little racing car, That's Not My Snowman touchy-feely book, the Hungry Caterpillar soft toy, and a soft Robot doll. It was a full stocking, I don't deny that. But her favourite was the Waybuloo DVD. She'd put it down, pick up something else, and then go back for the DVD. She just gazed at it most of the time with a silly, lovestruck look on her face.



As for other gifts, we limited that to two from us, and two from Santa. Then there were another three from the great-/grandparents, and a few others from friends (not to mention the huge amount that flooded in once we got to Malta!). By the end of the morning, it looked like a toyshop had crashed into our living room.

Lunch was nothing special. I went all out last year for exactly this reason - I knew that this year, it would be the last thing on my mind. I didn't want to miss out on a moment of Emily's first Christmas.

Unfortunately the excitement of the morning meant her nap ran almost an entire hour longer than it usually does and as both David and I felt it would be wrong to eat dinner without her, we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And by the time she was up, the turkey wasn't impressed to have been left waiting and as a result wasn't the juiciest it could have been. And as we had nibbled so much cheese to keep us going until she got up, we had no appetite. So in the end, Emily ate more turkey than David or I did and the Banoffee Pie I'd bought for dessert became our midnight snack. It was all quite confusing but it did make me realise that it was silly of me to be cooking turkey for tradition's sake when, if I had to be completely honest, I don't even really like it. So next Christmas I shall be making a delicious lasagne.

But back to the point. We then sauntered over to my sister's where - Emily could hardly believe it - more presents awaited.



And that was pretty much it really. There was almost no time to really enjoy the spoils of Christmas Day as early the next morning, we were off! But that rainbow kept its word, so it was all worth it in the end.