Agnes, the girls and I spent Christmas Eve with my family. Suephy, Ed and Jared flew in from Atlanta. Albert was out here from New York. We didn’t have a lot planned. We were all going to meet up at my parents’ place in the afternoon, hang out until dinner and then open gifts in the evening.
When we got to our parents’ place, Suephy, Ed and Jared hadn’t shown up yet. They had taken a nap at the hotel and then they were going to head out to a nearby park. We decided to join them, and since it was nearing sunset, we decided to put hats on Eleanor and Miranda to keep them warm.
Eleanor didn’t seem to like her hat. She made this face pretty much the whole time we were at the park.
Miranda didn’t seem to mind as much. Her hat had nice ear flaps to keep her ears warm.
Jared enjoyed the park. There were swings, slides, monkey bars and a castle surrounded by rocks that he could climb on. We stayed there until the sun set and when we told Jared it was time to go, he asked, “Why?”
“Because it’s dark.”
“But there are lights,” was his logical reply.
We let him swing a little longer and then we started to leave. Jared noticed that none of the other kids were around any more and understood that they had all gone home because it was dark.
Once home, we fed Eleanor and Miranda, and put them in the Pack n Play to sleep. Miranda is on the left side of the picture. Eleanor is on the right.
They don’t fit in the Pack n Play very well any more. They didn’t sleep very well either. Eleanor has been learning to roll over and one side effect of her attempts is that she often ends up rotating ninety degrees from where she started. This put her feet right at Miranda’s head and she woke up Miranda by kicking her in the face. Miranda responded by screaming and crying, which startled Eleanor and made her kick more.
We had them switch sides since Eleanor only turns in one direction and tried to have them sleep some more. Agnes, Albert and I were constantly going back to soothe the two of them during dinner.
After dinner, we opened presents. I know it was just Christmas Eve, but in our family we’ve always opened our gifts after dinner on Christmas Eve.
One of the things that Jared had asked for this Christmas was a red guitar. Albert did a lot of shopping and eventually found this red guitar for Jared. It was just his size, and it looked perfect. Then, when Jared tried strumming it, we found that the guitar had batteries and that it would launch into these bursts of loud acid rock. It was quite loud and jarring. Ed and Suephy had a look of surprise and horror. My dad and Agnes were in tears, laughing. Jared’s comment was “I don’t like it.” Fortunately, it was easy enough to remove the batteries and Jared continued to play with the guitar for the rest of the evening.
Finally, we took a family photo, and packed up the girls to head back home.
In the top row are Ed, Jared, and Suephy. The second row is Albert, my mom and dad. Agnes and I are in front, holding Eleanor and Miranda, respectively.