The time between Mia's second birthday and her third Christmas flew by so rapidly and with such busy-ness, I almost let December pass undocumented. A quick run down of the events since my last post is in order:
November 20: Mia turned two. She will proudly tell you herself all about her age.
This photo is a jump-ahead, but I thought it would be a good way to introduce the birthday series. Icing, anyone?
Three of the four "babies" who invaded my mother-in-law's house for the birthday celebration are in this photo: from rear to front we've got baby Reagan (my eldest niece's youngest child. For reasons of which no one is quite certain, her site has a photo of her big sister on it), Kennedy (my cousin/oldest friend's eldest daughter. The link is to her baby sister's site, in which she is featured prominantly) and the birthday girl.
Here's Mia staring down the candles on her cake; she knows that blowing them all out is 50% mental.
Mia can eat cake like no one else! Note the determination in her eyes.
Eating cake at that sustained velocity quickly exhausted Mia. There were fragments of cake everywhere! It was like someone used a chainsaw to slice the cake. Amazing!
Since I bravely handled cake duty, it was mommy's turn to supervise The Opening of the Presents. Newly wiped clean of cake particles (mostly), Mia got into it.
Plied with sugar and drunk with present-opening glee, Mia looks a bit dazed. We are dangerously close to baby-melt-down time....
"Christmas Morn" is a wonderful time...
Demonstrating her "old soul," Mia displays the Christmas morning angst it takes most people decades to develop. Actually, she seemed to have a good time Christmas morning. I just thought that this photo was funny because the room looks empty, aside from Mia in the floor, and because of her facial expression. Did Stacy take this photo as a commentary on the relative emptiness of our collective modern American, commercial Christmas experience? Nah! Mia just hadn't awakened fully when the shot was snapped.
Now, despite the fact that our little family has two large Labradors whom we ignore and neglect, and who subsequently tear up the backyard of our new house (it looks something like what I imagine the trenches of WWI looked like back there, but we are proudly now mole-free), and disregarding the number of times--at three in the morning, above the barking and howling--that my bride has said something like "We are getting rid of those dogs in the morning!", Stacy surprised Mia and I with the above-pictured baby lab on the morning before Christmas. That makes the dog population equal the human population at our house, and this one will be as big and rowdy as the other two soon.
After getting over the lifestyle change having another baby inside our house will mean, as well as my displeasure with my wife's impetuousness, I have really taken to Abby. She rides in my lap and comes to work with me (not being potty-trained means she can't stay home alone for eight hours each day). In the week we have had her, she has become my buddy.
Mia wrestles her new puppy-friend on Christmas morning (or "Christmas Morn," as Stacy put it this year!). Abby LOVES Mia; Mia is a little nonplussed about having competition for cutest in the house.
"Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays"? Can we crap up good things any more in this country?
At the risk of offending by not using one religious tradition's lingo, our family sincerely hopes that you all had and have very happy holidays. May you and your loved ones find peace and blessings, whatever your concept of God might be, and whatever your language.
