Christmas Memories

Wow! Still swamped...not that I am looking for sympathy from any of you folks. Yeah I read your blogs I know you all have your Christmas shopping done, your decorations up, your blog written in, and you are just as busy as me. I am in awe of all of you. So I know I don't deserve any sympathy, just wanted to explain the long absence. I don't even really have time to post today, but oh, this is such a cute story I have to document it.

SO the other day I did get the Christmas tree up, and pulled out some of the other decorations. I did most of the work while Bugaboo was napping, so when he woke up he was enraptured by all of the new things in his world. He was immediately drawn to my nativity, which I had put on the coffee table. Since Bugaboo usually claims all of the real estate on the coffee table for himself I thought we might have some issues. I carefully explaiend to him that this was Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus, and they were very nice to look at, but we couldn't play with them, becasue they were very special and we had to treat them nicely. Bugaboo was so sweet he got his face as close as he could to the Holy Family and exclaimed a reverently awed "ohhh." I thought it might work, I might get to keep my centerpiece the way it was, and soon we moved on to putting ornaments on the tree. Bugaboo started helping me decorate the Christmas tree (if you can call anything that an almost two year old does helping). He was really digging seeing all the ornaments. Then we pulled out the little lamb ornament. The little lamb ornament, is one of my favorite ornaments. My dad gave it to me a few years ago, because all growing up on our Christmas tree every year there was the "little blue lamb" ornament. The little blue lamb was small, its body was about the size of a jelly bean, and mishapen, but it was very special. That ornament was special because my dad had made it when he was little with his dad. The little legs on the lamb were the most bizarre thing about it. They were all different sizes and not shaped at all like a lamb's legs should be. My dad explained to me that when they made it they cooked it in the oven to harden it, but it cooked too long and the legs burned a little. But it was still really special, because they had made it together. My dad's dad had a lot of issues in his life and consequently wasn't the father he could have or should have been. I always got the immpression that making the little blue lamb was one of the few activities that my dad remembered doing with his dad. The little blue lamb was special I think because it was sort of symbol of my dad's relationship with his dad, it was a piece of his history. So every year us kids would decorate the Christmas tree and save the little blue lamb for my dad, and he would put it on the tree every year, because it was his special ornament. So a few years ago my dad bought six little lamb toys and made them into oranments for his children. My lamb is much healthier looking than the little blue lamb, as is my relationship with my dad. Whenever I look at my little lamb ornament I think about my dad, and what a good man he is despite the many challenges he faced in his childhood, and I appreciate him for being a good dad. So when we pulled out the little lamb ornament this year I was happy when I saw that Bugaboo loved it too. He of course wanted to play with it, so I let him for a few minutes and then talked him into putting it on the tree. So the little lamb was on the tree and I moved on to other things.

I was busy with some other decorating project when I noticed Bugaboo pull the lamb off the tree. He thought that I wasn't watching as he playfully trotted the lamb over to the Nativity. I was pretty sure that in a few seconds I would be forcefully pulling the Baby Jesus and the lamb ornament from my toddlers fingers while he screamed over the injustice, and I tried to find a new place for my nativity, but instead of intervening prematurely, I just observed. Bugaboo put the lamb right on the Baby Jesus, it looked like he was having the lamb nibble on Baby Jesus. I thought to myself "Oh, I'm pretty sure this is not appropriate, and we even just talked about how these figure were special and needed to be treated nicely." As I was resigning to the fact that I really couldn't expect my toddler to understand why these figures should be treated reverently, Bugaboo made a little smooch sound for the lamb then I understood, the lamb wasn't nibbling he was giving Baby Jesus kisses. Then the lamb moved to Mary and gave her a little kiss too, and then Joseph also was gently kissed by the lamb. Then the lamb trotted back to the tree. It was one of the sweetest Christmas moments I have ever experienced, my little Bugaboo for a brief second was a shepherd with one little special lamb, adoring the Christ child. I love Christmas becuase of memories like this.