Expectations

Well, after lighting our Hanukkah candles on the 6th night of Hanukkah, we put up the Christmas tree. I'll blog more about Hanukkah and our time in Chicago, but I realized that I barely took any pictures, so I am waiting to get some from my mom before I blog. We're really hoping that Caroline doesn't get too confused with all of this. Our original thought was to wait on doing much with Christmas until after Hanukkah is done, but Scott is leaving on a trip before Hanukkah ends and we don't want to wait until after he gets back. So...the candles are lit and the tree is up. Caroline has really enjoyed lighting the candles each night and has even started to recite some of the blessing herself. Pretty impressive if you ask me. She has her own menorah and takes lighting it very seriously (don't worry there is no actual flame on any of her candles, just felt).

When we were sitting at dinner talking about getting ready for Christmas we asked Caroline what the most important thing about Christmas was. Of course, I assumed she would immediately say, "Jesus!" Unfortunately she started with, "Snowmen!" We told her that, no, snowmen weren't the most important thing. She then went on to say, the tree and Santa. Have we completely failed our child?!?!? After more prodding about whose birthday it was that we were celebrating she got real excited and said, "Oh yeah, Jesus!" We really have been trying to teach her about the real reason we celebrate Christmas, but I was reminded tonight that there are so many other things that will get in the way of the real reason. S0...we'll keep reminding her and hope that she remembers Jesus.

Since Jesus is the reason we celebrate, we started by putting up our nativity set(s)...we actually have 4. We tried to make this a very teachable time, telling Caroline all about the different people and animals we were setting out and why they were there. Of course she is only 2 (I have to remind myself of this sometimes when my expectations for her get too high) and she was distracted by the hair brush nearby and the styrofoam from the boxes everything was in. We'll try to keep reminding her of the importance of that baby.

The "You can look, but don't touch" Nativity

Kid-friendly nativity

Dominican Nativity (anyone else think Joseph looks like Elvis?)

Nicaraguan Nativity
Just ignore the outlet cover.
I'm sure that in Nicaragua they are a
very important part of the birth of Christ.

We moved on to setting up the tree. We were given a pre-lit tree that spins. Super tacky, but much easier than lugging our small children out in the cold to cut down a tree that I would never remember to water anyways. Maybe someday we'll get a real one, but for now I am happy with the one we've got. Again, Scott and I had visions of all of us putting ornaments on the tree together and Caroline enjoying this as much as us, but again the two-year-old had other ideas. She was content to let us do all the ornament hanging while she played with the animals in the nativity set. Apparently all of the sheep were babies with no mothers so she had to bring them to Mary for her to take care of. Where she came up with this, I'll never know, but apparently Mary didn't have enough on her plate taking care of her newborn. :)



We then headed into the family room to enjoy some hot chocolate together. Again, didn't quite go as we planned. We were going to cuddle on the couch together and drink, but Caroline's sippy cup leaked all over the couch. Oh well. We ended up at the table together with Caroline asking her favorite question, "So what you did today Mommy?" So we chatted for a few and then headed her up for bed.

S0 the night didn't go exactly as we had expected it to, but we still had fun together. And we'll keep on reminding Caroline about that baby in a manger who came so that we might have life.

**Just so you don't think I completely forgot about my other child, he was sleeping for most of the evening and will hopefully enjoy the tree tomorrow :) Here's the little guy sitting happily in his PINK Bumbo while Caroline and I made dinner.