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Savoring the Season, Parts 2 and 3

Blogs: #6 of 49

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As promised, the weekend of the 17th we put up and decorated the tree. Well, we started to decorate it – we actually never finished. I had expected her to tear into all the boxes, taking everything out as quickly as possible. Instead she removed the ornaments slowly, discovering or rediscovering each one as she unwrapped it and, until I caught myself, it was I who was hurrying her along. Then I stopped to listen.

“Oh, my very favorite angel! I’ll put her with my other favorite angels.”
“A goose! Look, a goose! It can be the mama for the duck.”
“A spider web! That’s for Halloween.” And she hastily put it back in the box. The ornament was actually a dreamcatcher, but it looked like a spider web to her.
“ANOTHER cross. Mama had a lot of crosses, didn’t she?”

There are a lot of clusters on the tree – and a lot of bare spots, too. We got done what we got done. I finished the rest later, hanging not half the ornaments we have, but all the ones she had taken out and wanted on the tree.

We wrapped the presents for her family (we had shopped for them over Thanksgiving weekend). There were DVD’s for her daddy, her 16-year-old sister, and her oldest brother – “Happy Feet 2” and Barbie and Scooby-Doo videos. She confided that she hoped they would watch them with her and have snuggle time. And there was an adult coloring book for her mother, a book on how things are made for her other brother, and a set of plastic breakfast dishes and foods for her little sister that the two of them can use in their toy kitchen.

And we read more books – lots more books.

Two weeks later we ended our celebrations with opening stockings and presents, playing with said presents, reading more books, and writing thank-you notes. We were supposed to take down and put away the decorations, but somehow we never got to that. I’ll take care of it.

Yes, drawing it out and savoring the season works perfectly for us.