deadlightsgirl | Christmas from the House of G

Let's see, all the news that's fit to print. Where to start...

Thursday was the munchkin's school Xmas concert and party. I dolled both her and myself up in our festive (read: super gay) Christmas dresses, and even though I got no sleep and she was up at 5, the concert was adorable. My mom took Rob back to my house to start cooking our Christmas Adam Feast (his traditional awesome 4-meat ziti), and Chels and I stayed at school to have lunch with Gracie's class and go to the Xmas Dance Party. Gracie, who had been a bit tired and cranky during the concert, rallied and worked this party like a diva born. At one point she picked up a coat hanger someone had left lying around and ran around with it until I, like a good drag queen, yelled "Gracie! No wire hangers!" to her. The DJ let her play with the microphone, and she kept bringing Chels and me onto the risers so she would have backup dancers. I got felt up by a zillion children - my own fault for wearing a crushed velvet dress. Chelsea made friends with this 15 year old kid who is a terrific dancer, and she danced with him until Gracie decided NO, that is MY Chelsea, and took her away. When Santa Claus came in, Gracie took him my the hand and was his escort pretty much the entire time he was there. Their outfits matched.

When the party was over, Gracie stayed at school for the last bit of it while Chels and I went home to a yummy-smelling house. We didn't nap, but we did watch The Last Unicorn, and Gracie got home and watched the last 20 minutes with us - I hope to get her to watch the whole thing soon!

We were joined for dinner by Rob's girlfriend and her adorable 2-year-old daughter. Gracie had a wonderful time, didn't really fuss much when Daddy left (though she did randomly bite me - apparently her seatmate on the bus had just bitten her, and tiredness plus cranky at the party being over made her feel the need to punish Mama, since of course everything is my fault). All three of us were zonked, and we were all asleep by 9:30.

A weird thing was that the next morning, Gracie suffered a noticeable language setback, apparent to both Chels and myself. Her language had really been on an upswing over the past couple of weeks, but the first half of that day, it swung in the other direction. Chelsea left at 1:30, and this caused crying and pouting for a good half hour (though quite verbal - "Chelsea want to live HERE! I love you Chelsea!"), but I distracted her with the Neil episode of Arthur, and she spent the next several hours being super-snuggly to Mama (and her language came back on its own) while she watched SpongeBob from my lap, and I dozed. We decorated our Christmas tree - well, she hung up all the ornaments. I just took pictures. Then we decorated gingerbread men for Santa (mine was a feeble attempt at a gingerbread Dalek). After she went to bed, I brought all the presents out of hiding, nibbled the Dalek, had a cup of spiked eggnog, watched an episode of Dr Who, and snoozed.

Christmas Day (and she actually slept til 7, and in her own bed), she was beyond adorable with her big pile of gifts (I have awesome friends and family), and she spent the day playing with her new swag while I ate way too much leftovers and visited with my mom for a while. Nice day, though I could have done without being up sick all last night - I thought I had spaced out the too much food, but it snuck up on me. I declared today a No Italian Food Day, and it has helped. I also made pumpkin eggnog pancakes, which help everything.

Today my brother came to visit with Gracie's two wee cousins, which always makes her happy, and he brought us a terribly swanky gift - a new iPad, which he helped us set up. She hasn't stopped playing with it. I loaded it up with all these games and a season of SpongeBob, and I daresay it will make travel worlds easier, to say nothing of our current state of snowed-in. She loves using the computer at school and the library, and this is a wonderful thing for her. She sat in my bed and played with it for an hour while I read The Wee Free Men (thank you,

ladyjoust ), and then dozed. We tried to go out in the snow, but it is too much. I'll worry about it tomorrow, hopefully the kid who mows my lawn will come round with his snowblower and I can just give him some money to deal with it for me. The bummer will be not being able to take Gracie to the gymnastics thing I'd signed her up for, but oh well. She has something planned each day for the rest of the week, yay - Wed and Thurs, she gets to go to her old preschool from 9-3, which will be joyous for both of us. Yay respite care!

Thank you to everyone who helped make our Christmas lovely - special thanks to Captain Outstanding and The Awesomettes and everyone at Jesse Kaplan school, who are wonderful beyond belief. Like the man said, Merry Grimble, everyone. :)