In the
Herron household, generally we wait until Christmas is almost upon us to start decorating, celebrating, and generally getting into all things Christmas. In fact, I distinctly remember a Christmas not-so-past that we were putting up the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. However, we (
ok, I...) decided to kick off the Christmas season a little bit early this year. Emily and I joined Santa, Elves, and some friends from work at "Cookies and Milk with Santa" sponsored by
Beaumont Hospice (yes, my office. Hey, it was
convenient, and I personally know the
santa :) We got to put together crafts of Christmas ornaments and holiday picture frames (
ok, so I did the craft too...however Emily just loved making piles of the colored foam), chow down on almost every type of cookie you could imagine, (
ok, so I did most of the cookie eating too...this is what you get for having a
preggo around cookies at 10 o' clock in the morning having had no breakfast! Emily did however devour the largest sugar cookie I had ever seen), listen to Elves read Christmas stories, and meet the Jolly Bearded Ma
n himself. I must say, I wasn't expecting Emily to react very well to Santa, given her stranger anxiety and all. But she was very, very curious about the Man in Red, even tentatively approaching him to
accept a candy cane (I thought having her sit on his lap might just be asking a bit too much from her!). The candy cane was the greatest discovery, direct quote from Emily : "YUMMY!" Emily had the greatest time running around, staring in awe at the elves and other kids, and playing "peekaboo!" with the office ladies. I had a great time too, just watching my little girl have fun and remembering how cool Christmas was when you were a kid and you believed in Santa, Rudolph, and magic, and didn't have to put up and take down all the Christmas decorations yourself :) What a great way to kick off the
Christmas season...bring on the holidays!
dow the excitement exhibited by Emily. After all, she's only one and a half, and up until recently she has been just as thrilled about tupperware as she has been about anything else. So, even though we had some cool stuff for her, I was prepared for what I thought could be a big letdown when she decided to pass by the new toys for the box they came in. Well, I guess those days might be over, because she brought me a neatly wrapped present delivered by the neighbors on Christmas Eve and said "open, please!". She opened it almost all by herself, and was delighted with her new toy. She must have remembered this experience Christmas morning, because she shouted "Presents! Presents! Open, open!". She is old enough now to have some imagination in her play, and
she was delighted by everything. She kept going strong until suddenly she was exhausted and overstimulated by all of the new things, and pleaded "no more!", and went down for a morning nap. Once she was refreshed by some sleep, she was ready to go back at it. While I received some wonderful gifts myself, seeing my little girl so excited by new and interesting things was by far the most priceless gift of all. 
