A Christmas to Remember

We decided to hunker down and stay in Vermont this year for the holidays. With the second baby coming in a little over a month and family feeling like they wanted to stick around their own homes, it ended up being just our nuclear family. It did feel somewhat strange to be so close, yet so far away from family, but we managed to arrange for various engagements with friends and were really looking forward to the variety they would add to our traditional holiday repertoire........ This was to include a fun gathering of folks for a seven course fish dinner prepared by our friend Lauren who is a professional chef on X-mas Eve and a Turkey feast at our house with our friends Chris, Rebecca, and Chase.

As is often the case, it's always good to have a plan B........ It turns out, our gal Cal got her first stomach bug on Thursday night. She was as thrown off by the whole thing as we were. It needs to be explained that it is these such incidents that scared me the most about becoming a parent. Years ago, I basically made John sign a "pre-nup" that stated that he'd be the one to deal with these messes when they come. Alas, the time came and it became glaringly apparent that it helps to have a two-person roster on the clean up team--- one person cleans up the kid while the other cleans up the "site". So, even at 35-weeks pregnant, I managed to just deal with the situation with a lot less squeamishness than I imagined I would have had and John willingly dealt with more than his fair share.

Kids are pretty amazing. Cal woke up on Friday and she was pretty much good to go. She said she wanted breakfast and seemed to have her sense of humor and energy. Even so, we called our hosts for the 7 Fishes Dinner and told them we'd sadly have to decline the invitation. Later in the day, after consultation with a friend in the medical profession who said that if Cal was asymptomatic for 24 hours, she'd probably be good to go to the party and a call from the hosts saying they really were fine with us coming if Cally seemed all right, we decided to go for it. We loaded into the car, drove 40 minutes south, settled into their cozy house, accepted a glass of wine, and within 15 minutes, poor little Cally had barfed on the counter of their gourmet kitchen.

To say that we felt horrible is an understatement. We felt so bad for our little gal who was clearly not well and was so looking forward to hanging out with other kids, but we also felt like J.V. parents for having brought a sick kid to a family gathering. We deserve any razzing that they had to throw our way after that one.

Fortunately, I'd purchased a chunk of wild salmon at the store earlier in the day (thinking we weren't going to the party) and that was still in the fridge. So, upon putting our sick little girl to bed (but making sure that she left some cookies and celery for Santa and his reindeer before she retired), John and I actually had a lovely, intimate X-mas Eve dinner together.



Cal woke up early in the morning and asked to come into our bed. We had our reservations, but she was just too darn cute and snuggly, so we acquiesced and she slept until 8am. Even when we told her that Santa had come and asked if she wanted to see what he had for her, she seemed nonplussed and even uninterested. But we riled her up and brought her downstairs to see the loot. Poor thing had a hard time getting all too excited about things.


We figured a little breakfast would make her feel better........ But that didn't turn out to be the case, she got sick while eating her breakfast, told us she was hungry 20 minutes later, and then got sick again (yes, we officially are J.V. parents for feeding a kid right after she gets sick). With that, we officially postponed the feast planned with our friends and hunkered down for a lazy day:


trying hard to hydrate:

Alas, after a nap, Cal was back to herself and took some time to enjoy the loot that she could hardly acknowledge hours earlier.



While it wasn't really the Christmas that had been mapped out in our heads, it turned out to be very special and intimate indeed.

Oh, and here's Cally singing about one of her many gifts, a pair of red ski boots: