A Bit Non-traditional

Christmas this year was very different from Christmases past. I made the mistake of getting super excited for this year to be the best Christmas ever, owing mostly to the fact that the boys are such fun ages right now and I'm neither pregnant nor nursing a baby, so I felt like we could all participate in the holiday fun as a family. Of course, we all know what happens when you make plans. Other stuff happens. Thankfully Jack never did get sick, but he did curl up on the couch around 3:30 in the afternoon Christmas Eve and take a nap. I thought he was probably coming down with the stomach virus Matteas had just recovered from that very morning so I let him sleep. Turns out he just needed a nap, the kind that would let him stay awake until the wee hours of the morning. I'd been so excited about our plan to go to the 4 p.m. children's Mass on Christmas Eve so we'd have plenty of time to have dinner with my family that night and still be able to get the boys to bed at a decent hour. I love the idea of Midnight Mass, but Jack is the sort of kid who is absolutely wrecked the next day if he goes to bed any later than nine; he doesn't know how to sleep in and often will wake even earlier if he's up past his eight o'clock bedtime. Being four years old, he's a little bit of a handful right now anyway and with all the stimulation I knew Christmas morning would bring I really wanted to set him up for a good day. That's why I wasn't too disappointed when Matteas got sick and I knew we'd be canceling our usual plans. I thought we could use the opportunity to focus on our little family, have a cozy dinner together at home. get the boys to bed early, not have to be anywhere on time in real clothes, and have plenty of time to wrap presents after the boys were asleep before getting to bed at a reasonable hour ourselves. None of that happened. Well, we didn't have to be anywhere on time. I made duck and had to keep fiddling with the sauce since it wasn't coming out the way I wanted. It eventually came out fantastic, but not before Matteas decided he was done with Christmas Eve and he was going to bed. At least one of us would be well-rested. I thought. Dinner was beautiful, even though a family member was missing. Tristan stopped by on his way to Midnight Mass(he represented the family) so we still had four at the table. Jack, being a normal four year-old, declined to eat the duck. We'd watched Peter and the Wolf that afternoon, a version where Peter's only friend is a really cute duck. Who gets eaten by the wolf. So Jack had grilled cheese. The rest of us ate duck, just as lustily as the wolf. Perhaps more so, it was that good. I've eaten duck before, but it's always tasted too greasy and a little dirty to me. Not this duck. It was rich and flavorful, with crisp fat that I can only describe as tasting like poultry-flavored bacon. The flesh tasted the way I've always wanted Thanksgiving turkey to taste, like ultra-rick chicken but wilder, but it never does. And oranges and duck were made for each other. The sauce I made was a simmering of duck stock(made from the neck), red wine vinegar, freshly squeezed orange juice, garlic, ginger, orange rind, sugar and rosemary. I brushed it on the duck during the last few minutes of roasting, after I'd simmered the duck on the stove in an orange-garlic-bay-leaf brine. I served it with green beans and arugula salad, and as it turns out, Duck a L'Orange with arugula and fresh oranges is one fantastic combination. We will be eating duck again. Probably for every birthday I ever have after this. Matteas woke up after dinner and had serious trouble falling back asleep, especially after we tried putting Jack to bed(they share a room) and Jack kept singing. Until two o'clock in the morning. Christmas morning featured more citrus, with orange rolls and coffee. Lots of coffee. I also made a really simple egg dish after discovering we only had three eggs left in the house and I didn't want the boys eating just pastry for breakfast. I chopped up half a loaf of crusty french bread, mixed three eggs with one cup milk and one cup half and half, tossed some dijon mustard and paprika in the egg mixture, then layered it in a buttered baking dish with a good amount of cheddar cheese. I soaked it overnight then baked it in the morning, and it was really good. I was extra pleased that I'd fed my whole family with only three eggs. Matteas still declines to eat most of the time, but there were leftovers so three eggs still would have been enough. Aaron and I both got each other arguile socks. Matteas decided he really like Aaron's and demanded to wear a pair. I'd gotten the boys matching Christmas pajamas, but Matteas leaked through his diaper all over his and Jack barfed(not sick barf, just a loose burp) on his shirt so I have no pictures. Another plan that didn't happen. We did actually put clothes on Matteas that morning, but somehow they kept coming off so he spent most of Christmas Day in a diaper and dad's socks. In the background you can see one of the gifts I made for Aaron's parents. I was inspired by Stephanie, who makes silhouettes of her kids every year. This was the first year I've done it, and I have to say I'm really pleased with how they turned out and what a cost-effective gift they were. The greatest investment was my time, which is a more meaningful gift than something I could buy anyway. I love the way the back of Matteas' hair turned out.

And yes, Jack's lips really are that big. I double-checked.

I thought $50 was a bit much to spend on a toy vacuum cleaner, but I have no regrets. Matteas loves it, and had used it every day since Christmas. Also, it's nice and quiet. It's loud enough that it satisfies the child using it, but not loud enough to be annoying. In the yuppie spirit of Pottery Barn, it's modeled after an actual Dyson which I think is actually kind of cool.

In the afternoon we headed over to Aaron's parents to exchange gifts, have Christmas dinner and play some games. Some were rowdier than others.

I gave Aaron this really cheesy "portable ping pong" set. It came with a net which is supposed to suction cup to the top of any table, but we couldn't get them to stick so we stuck them to glass plates. The paddles that came in the set were also dreadfully small, but Aaron's mom had some bigger ones that worked much better. The boys saw us playing and wanted to join in, which was more fun because Aaron is frustratingly good at ping pong. He hits the ball really fast and at an angle so that it goes shooting past you before you can even see it, which really irritates me. He slowed it down for the boys though, and it was hilarious helping them play. Jack had a really hard time waiting until the ball was actually near him to start swinging, so a lot of Aaron's energy was directed at restraining Jack. For such a simple game it was a lot of fun. Today we did some stamp work with one of the gifts I got for the boys. I found this stamp set on Amazon and was nervous about getting it because Amazon didn't have a lot of information about it, but I really wanted to get them things they could do and not just fill them up with things to have, and this set worked out really well. It only comes with three ink pads, but I ordered another set so they'd have more colors. Too keep them from contaminating the colors, I sat there with diaper wipes and cleaned off each stamp as they used it. Neurotic? A bit. Did it work? Totally. After watching me do it for a few minutes they started cleaning the stamps on their own. I like getting stuff for Christmas that you can use because it helps alleviate post-Christmas let-down. After the roller coaster of excitement and disappointment, contingency plan excitement and more disappointment, I don't feel done celebrating Christmas. I had a good talk with my Mom about it and she had some really good advice. She told me that while we have really little kids and only really little kids, Christmas is just going to be like this. I have very fond memories of staying up late for Mass on Christmas Eve after having a big dinner with all my cousins, and coming home really late at night to find new pajamas(which my Mom usually made herself) on our beds. My Mom pointed out that by the time we had Christmases like that, she had lots of older kids to help out with the younger ones. Right now we have "younger ones" and no help. Jack actually picked out fabric for me to make them pajamas, but I bought them some from Old Navy as back-up. Even with nowhere to be in the days right before Christmas I still didn't have time to get to everything I wanted to. I'm also irritated that while from a liturgical perspective we're not even halfway into celebrating Christmas, but my feelings about when Christmas is over are largely dictated by the retail world. I don't want it to be that way, but I can't help feeling like I'm reaching too far to still be playing Christmas carols and keeping the tree up. We're planning a dinner with my side of the family on January 6th to make up for Christmas Eve, and after that I think I'll be okay with taking down the decorations. And then I'll start planning what I can do differently to make next Christmas even better.