Christmas Traditions

I confirmed my suspicion that we have made sickness a Christmas tradition. I somehow remember most of my birthdays/Christmas intertwined with sickness even before I got married, but even now, the holiday season is still my favorite time of year. I looked up past Christmases in my journal and every year since we were married, our holiday has been tainted with illness:

1999 - I got a cold, lost voice prior to Christmas, but mostly recovered by our wedding
2000 - Morning sickness plus cold produced “mild” ear infection (and homesick for CA)
2001 - We were all fine until we came back from CA with colds after Christmas
2002 – We were all fine until we came back from MN with flu after Christmas
2003 – Morning sickness plus cold produced severe ear infection; hearing loss and vomiting = ER on Christmas Eve
2004 – I got a cold after Christmas (we agreed it was our favorite Christmas together)
2005 – Megan very bad cold right after Christmas that spread to Isaac and me around New Years
2006 – Flu the whole week of Christmas -- 11 days of taking turns puking and going diarrhea, and still continuing with teething (Isaac) and head colds (Rex and Isaac) and agonizing constipation (Megan -- dehydration from puking caused rock hard stool again)

The good news: no one has had any ear infections this year!

Despite the disappointing state of health this Christmas, we sure tried to make the most of it. We went driving to look at lights quite often (Okies sure skimp on lights; amazingly, the afluent areas were least lit), the kids sang Christmas songs, they ate chocolates from their advent calendars, we decorated the house and tree, we decorated a gingerbread house, we had a Countdown Calendar on the computer and a paper chain to count down the days till Christmas, we had an FHE lesson on Christ’s birth, we read tons of Christmas books from the library, and watched many Christmas movies from the library too, and we bought a new wall nativity scene that Megan and Isaac loved tearing down for me to put up over and over again.

Rex and I love to hear the kids sing Christmas songs. Frosty the Snowman is Megan’s favorite and we had to read/sing that book during every single story time. She often makes up her own songs and I’ll turn off the music in the car so I can hear her. But I have to be discrete, because she’ll stop if she notices I’m listening. Megan still thinks her big brother is super cool and loves to follow him around and chime in to the songs he sings. A few times at night when she’s woken up and screamed, I’ve used this to my advantage. When I ask James to sing to her, he’ll ask “what do you want me to sing, Megan?” She’ll make her request, James will sing to her, and she will calm down. (When he sleeps through her nighttime fits, I sing to her myself, often Frosty the Snowman….)

James is very good about staying in his room till 6am. The digital clock I bought for him has kept him in there till the appointed time. Even on Christmas morning, James wouldn’t let Megan out of the room until the clock said 6am. Rex set our alarm for 5:45am so we could get dressed before they came out to see what Santa brought. They didn’t fail to notice that Santa ate the cookies they left. We let Isaac sleep while they opened all the presents. I had worried in vain about the kids not getting enough presents. Even if we hadn’t bought them anything, they would have had a ton of gifts from their grandparents. Even Jeremy (Rex’s friend) and Dan and Jean sent presents. I was pleased that my $20 investment (at a garage sale) in the pirate ship and accessories has proven to be James’ favorite. They got so many things, I’m not going to bother listing them. But they loved all their presents.

Christmas turned out alright, even overshadowed by sickness. (No one threw up on Christmas day, thank goodness, but we certainly had no appetite for a feast.) We are not sad to think that this will be our last Christmas in Oklahoma; we look forward to sharing our Christmas with the Voglers in Texas next year.