This year Josie learned that some kids write a letter to Santa. Probably from one of the books from the library. This one was a great one for anyone interested in the history of Santa. I sat down with her to write it. She thought she needed to tell Santa where we lived so he could bring our stockings, thus the beginning of the note. Then I reminded her we’d be traveling. She suggested he could just leave them on the front porch and we’d get them when we get home. What patience! But I intended to bring our stockings with us so I suggested that maybe she could ask him to bring them to us in Florida. She agreed, but again didn’t know what to write. So I told her that kids usually asked Santa for things in their stocking. So you can see what she asked for below in the picture [click on it to make it bigger]. Remember Santa, above all, you should be polite.

She signed her name and wrote Santa on the envelope and I scanned it before she dropped it into the mailbox. I expect the post office gets a lot of mail like this at this time of year.

So that sent me onto the hunt for candy canes, a picture (of unspecified variety), and a thank you note, but I was sick, so I delegated. My mother in law bought some festive candy canes. Javier drew a cute picture of the north pole and Jordi wrote the thank you note. I think the picture was her favorite part of the stocking as she decided she wanted to recreate it herself on Christmas day as shown in the photo below.

Earlier in the month, after she had written the letter to Santa we had gone to the mall to buy my dad some pants (with him). It was a Thursday afternoon around 4 and so things were relatively quiet. I pointed out to Josie the Santa sitting and taking pictures from far away on the second floor. She was interested but wary. We bought the pants and then went down for a closer look. I asked Josie if she wanted to go say hi, she didn’t. But she wouldn’t walk away. Finally as we go to leave, she says she wants to say hi. Thankfully there is no line and I drag her through the maze to get in. We decline the pictures and I try to walk up to Santa with Josie, but she prefers a more comfortable 10 foot distance between them. My dad walks Celia up closer and at about 5 feet away she starts to cry and reach back for me. This seems to be a normal Santa reaction I find as I look at my friend’s pictures. Why do people do this again?

To continue, I tell Santa that Josie wrote him a letter and that gets her going a bit to actually walk up to a more comfortable 5 ft speaking distance. She tells him where to bring the stockings and he asks her what she wants for Christmas. And she is silent. Santa then starts making suggestions and I hope he notices the death stares I am giving him as I am not too thrilled with his ideas as they are largely plastic, big and loud. Then he offers a candy cane and Josie is won over enough to touch him and take the candy. He gives the Celia a candy despite me saying no thanks, which I then have to take away because she puts everything in her mouth. She continues to refuse to sit down but she just wants to stand there and stare pretty much. Thankfully no one is in line behind us for a bit, but we eventually drag her away.

I’m very curious about what she thinks of all this but she isn’t sharing. Later on, at Christmas, she tells cousin Sonya that there is one Santa that lives at the mall, and another at the north pole. So I ask her what the Santa at the mall does the rest of the time. ‘Oh he goes shopping and walks around.’ We’ll have to keep our eyes out for him if we ever go again.

Christmas morning the girls were up their usual early selves and I took a video of them coming down the stairs to find the tree and presents. It’s dark and out of focus. Sorry about that. Most notable is that Celia and Josie both want to know if they get to eat the cookies that Santa didn’t eat, and then Jordi drops most of them on the floor. Pretty much this video is only for the grandma’s, everyone else can skip it.

The girls went for their stockings first while waiting for everyone else to get up and shower. Josie enjoyed that Santa knows her favorite restaurant.

They both wanted things out of each others stocking.

Later on we opened presents. The kids struggled with how long it took for everyone to get through it all, but they did ok playing with their new toys and old toys and the boxes the new toys came in. Celia went around picking up different presents from different piles trying to open them, but then didn’t want to open something when it was her turn!

All in all it was a relaxing morning at home opening gifts. We got some pretty fabulous stuff and lots of gift certificates to spend! We’ve already booked our winter weekend getaway.

Later that afternoon we went to Javier’s new place and got to see all the hard work he’s put into fixing it up. It looks nice and modern! Josie and Celia enjoyed a clarinet performance and banging on the keyboards (both musical and computer). But I guess I forgot the camera because I have no pictures.

So as I previously mentioned, we’re all sick in Miami, spreading our germs around more. Sorry about that. We most kept it low key hanging around the house while Josie had a fever upwards of 104 for 48 hours. Wrapped some presents, got some naps. We did some exploring of the decorations too.

By Christmas eve thankfully Josie’s fever had broken so she was feeling considerably better. The party was at my inlaws house so everyone came over to visit and party. We had food, mostly cooked by Vanessa, and what we here would call a Yankee Swap. Jordi and I managed to go home with the present we came with, score! It was great to get to see everyone and even introduce Celia to a few people she hadn’t met yet.

Josie spent most of the night with Sabrina, pictured above in blue. Josie had a great time telling her what to do and where to go and Sabrina played along gallantly. They even worked on a gingerbread train together. Later on Josie hung out with Sonya, in pink above, playing. Later on she told Jordi, about the time when she was with Sonya (who is married to Jordi’s older cousin), “we were all alone without any grownups!”

We had a last minute cookie emergency, in that there were no cookies for Santa Claus. We had made 7 different kinds up here in Boston, but didn’t travel with them to Miami. So I whipped together a batch of shortbread cookies for Santa, which Josie insisted on hiding inside the cage that holds wine ‘So no one else here would eat them.’ We also put out some carrots for the reindeer. Josie insisted that we make a sign that said ‘Cookies for Santa, Carrots for Reindeer.’ She was also a little disturbed when she realized that since the cookies were in the house, that meant that some wierd guy in a red suit was presumably going to be in the house that night. Perhaps she thought he’d just leave the stockings out front like the postman.

This year for Christmas we started off in Orlando to visit with Jordi’s paternal side of the family and his mom, dad and sister drove up to visit too. The night we got there we were invited to Jordi’s uncles house for a yummy traditional Venezuelan Christmas dinner and many presents. In the picture below there was an alligator in the water behind everyone, just a little one, but still. Josie was not in a mood for pictures after the long travel day.

Sadly Celia is not as a good a flyer as Josie has been and was a lot fussier on the plane than usual since she couldn’t move around much in our laps. Josie enjoyed JetBlue’s TVs as we broke our normal TV rules and let her watch some for all our sanity. But she got bored before too long anyway.

We stayed at an easy Orlando hotel with a spray park and pool. Only us northerners thought to bring our bathing suits though, and it was a good thing we did, the pool was heated and awesome the next morning.

I played with the bright bright light and a high shutter speed to freeze the water.

By the end of swimming I think Josie was tired enough that she didn’t notice all the pictures.

After our swim we cleaned up and went to a Thai place for a quick lunch before a family nap. And by family I mean everyone but Josie who somehow managed to be considerate and quiet for two hours in a hotel room with us. Maybe she did sleep a little but she didn’t admit to it.

A couple of days before the trip I started to get sick with a cough and runny nose and chills. The airplane didn’t help, but we continued to muddle through.

After our nap we went to Downtown Disney and met up with more family. We posed with characters and ate ice cream.

Josie was not terribly impressed with the legos, but maybe she will be later when she starts to play with them herself.

Josie and Celia rode on the train. But then of course the train ride ended. And Celia was very sad…

Thankfully she then saw we were headed to the merry go round and then she was excited again.

Of course that ride had to end too eventually and we had more sad faces and crying. But we moved on eventually and did some pictures with characters and I tried some artsy shots as the sun went down and there wasn’t enough light to do anything.

All in all I should have brought my flash for some pictures. But we capped off the night with a nice dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s little restaurant and headed home with the girls while everyone else went out for more fun. The next morning we did a little more family visiting before heading for Miami. Unfortunately we all started to feel considerably more sick that Friday and the ride unfortunately was capped off by an hour of Celia crying and Josie vomiting in the car only three blocks away from the house and spiking a high fever that night.

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates!

Sadly both our kids are pretty sick right now. Josie took two naps today, when she generally won’t even take one even with a long ride in the car. She’s had a fever and Celia is very congested. I even got a picture of her passed out on the couch.

We had a nice sunset today though, and so I grabbed the camera for a few shots before dinner.

Here’s a shot from earlier in the day with Javier and Celia hanging out on the bench with Simba nearby.

This year I wanted to try to impart more of the giving spirit onto Josie as I thought she might be able to understand more. So we gave Josie a set of three charities to pick from, Toys for Tots, Arlington Food Pantry, and Nursing Mothers Council. All worthy choices that might strike a chord with her. As I could have predicted, the toy one (Toys for Tots) won out quickly, she didn’t need to spend much time considering it at all. So I handily plopped her down on my lap to shop at Amazon and instructed her to find a toy that she would like to play with so we can give it to someone else. She picked out a fire chief costume.

She hemmed and hawed over why we would give it away, when we didn’t already have one of them while we waited for it. But it arrived and although she wanted to play with it she seemed to understand when I said we had to keep it ‘new’. We walked over to the donation bin and she dropped it right inside. She only wishes that she could get a note or see the ‘little girl when she opens it’.

I’ve been involving her more in our donations too, talking about how we’re giving away some of our stuff because we have so much and we can’t use it all. So we’re giving away our extra stuff to Goodwill. Nothing to do with the fact that our basement is stuffed to the gills!

No we didn’t go with that one.

This fall we went with a new gymnastics class for a few reasons. Her old one was a lot of time spent waiting for a turn and the teacher calling the non-cooperative kids back to class. Josie loved it, but one of the reasons she loved it was because of her friend Jordan who was also in the class. Jordan was 5 and so starting this fall she went to school and couldn’t do a Tuesday morning class anymore. Josie’s teacher also told me that she’s pretty talented and should take ‘real’ gymnastics classes. So off we went to a real gymnastics studio, but no big surprise, ‘real’ gymnastics aren’t that real at age 3, but they sure do cost more money. We did one 10 week session and Josie enjoyed it, Celia tolerated having to play in the background, but we’re done with it for now. We may go back to the other class and do both the baby and the big kid class so both of them can have fun in the new year.

They did a good job of keeping the kids active by moving them in a circuit, but there wasn’t much teaching or learning going on per say, just more ‘ok walk here and jump here’. A little bit of gymnastics skills with walking on the beam or hanging from a bar, but I was surprised at the lack of instruction. Perhaps the kids are just too little, this isn’t Russia or China screening for olympians. But the class was almost 20 minutes drive away (celia hates the car still) and overlapped with Celia’s preferred nap. So bye bye  to that class, but she had fun. We got to take some pictures in the last session, but it was too dark in there to do anything great.

In the last class they had each kid run a circuit independently while the parents sat in and watched. My mom came to help with Celia, ended up sitting with her sleeping in the car the entire time. Josie ran through her circuit without stopping and flipped over at the bar instead of just hanging from it (landed on her feet just fine) and then tackled her teacher. Guess the audience made her a little nervous.