Merry Christmas, y'all

Just in case you were worried, I did not auction my child off on eBay or anything. He suffered through some serious time out. He apologized. I cooled down (eventually). We're friends again. It's in the past. Like many of you have said, I will someday have a big hearty laugh about his little Christmas Eve caper.

Onward!

It's kind of funny to remember when William still didn't fully understand Christmas. He knew there were lights and sounds and good food and presents, but he didn't really understand the order in which they all arrived...and he didn't understand it enough to get really impatient about it, either. He was just delighted by whatever happened to happen.

This year, however, he knew exactly what was going on. We ate Christmas Eve dinner (also known as Aaron's birthday dinner) at the Wyckoffs' on Thursday night, and by the time I packed William into the car, it was really getting late. I told him that we'd need to go to bed really quickly to make sure he was asleep so that Santa Claus could come to our house.

David, who drove the minivan home after us, got online and looked up the website for NORAD, which "tracks" Santa's magical sleigh ride all over the globe on Christmas Eve. After I dressed William in his jammies, we told him to go check out the map on the computer to see where Santa was.

"Hey, look," David said. "Santa's in Newfoundland. That's north of here."

And as we watched the map, Santa was suddenly in Barbados. I guess he was travelling up and down the eastern seaboard before moving west, which seems to make sense.

"See, William?" David said. "Santa's there..." and he use the mouse to point out the little sleigh icon, and then he moved the mouse to put the cursor an inch or two to the left, over Tennessee. "And there's our house."

William took one look at the screen and took off running for his room. "Mommy, come on! Hurry!" he yelled over his shoulder.

I caught up to him as he was climbing into his bed. Out of breath, I said, "Okay, what story do you want to read tonight?"

William, pulling his covers up, said, "I don't think I need a story tonight."

Just so you know, he's never said anything like that before in his entire life. In fact, it was so unprecedented, that it caught me completely off guard. Let's see that little remark again, so we can absorb the full impact of it: "I don't think I need a story tonight." Nope, it still kills me.

"Well, how about I say a short prayer with you?"

"No, I'll say one when I'm lying down trying to sleep. Night night, Mommy." He shooed me out.

And I said, "Okay" and turned off the light and shut the door, and there was not a single peep out of him the rest of the night. William wasn't willing to take any chance that he'd make Santa Claus skip his house and...the horror...perhaps not bring him the Batman cave that he's been wanting for months now.

Santa, indeed, came through.








































A Christmas Day family photo of the three of us. Probably one of the last ones we'll have of the three of us, since we're practically four now anyway!


















We really did have a nice Christmas Day. I'll try to post some more Christmas photos soon.