This is the family picture we used for our Christmas card this year

This year for Christmas we spent the day together as a family on Christmas Eve and went to a Christmas Eve service at our church. As we were getting ready to leave, E did not want to cooperate. I had a feeling that he was not going to do well in the service and I was right. He was terrible! He wouldn’t sit still, he was loud and he wanted to climb on the chairs. Joey and I took turns taking him out of the service. At first he didn’t like it but then I think it turned into a game going in and out. When I took him out of the service, I would put him on a set of stairs and tell him he needed to have a quiet mouth. He would scream at me and try to get off the stairs. Once he calmed down we went back in the service. At one point in the service he was banging an unlit candle stick on my head and using it as a sword to hit the other candle we had. This was near the end of the service and I put my head down and just started crying. Joey wasn’t sure what to do so he took E out until the service was over. I cried on the way home and E asked me what was wrong. I wasn’t quite sure how to answer him so I just told him I was sad. He then said “You’re too far away. Can you put your face over here so I can kiss you?”. I think I was crying because I didn’t know how to handle his behavior and it got the best of me. I was also worried about everyone around us the whole time so I missed half of what was said. AND I am 6 months pregnant. Hormones. Right? Joey told me that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself and that E really is a good kid.

When we got home from the service we opened presents from Grandma and Grandfather Day and then Joey spent some time playing Santa. We bought E a 100 piece train set and Joey made a fun tunnel box for him to play with

Christmas morning E was excited to play with his train. We went slow and let E play with things as he unwrapped them. It was a fun morning

After E’s nap we went to my parents house for dinner and more presents. He had a lot of presents to open and he wanted to play with everything like we did in the morning but we were able to convince him to keep unwrapping presents (I didn’t want to be there all night. hahaha).

The Christmas season this year was a lot of fun watching the small things that brought a smile to E’s face. He loved to look at Christmas lights on houses. At night he would say “Can you slow down?”. After several weeks of us telling him that we could not slow down because we were on a main rode, he would then say “Are you on a main rode? Can you slow down?”. Too funny.

He learned the words to Silent Night and Away in a Manger (among other Christmas songs) and every time Silent Night came on the radio, he would scream “IT’S SILENT AT NIGHT!”. He did that once while I was waiting to see my doctor and a lady in the waiting room said “that is the cutest thing”. He also liked to sing Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer and O Christmas Tree.

He loved to look at the live nativity scene on the way home from my parents house. We would pull over so he could see the donkey and horses. I tried passing it one night and he started crying and asked me to turn around.

Another fun memory from this season: one day at school in early December he asked his teacher where the manger was and asked why she didn’t have a baby Jesus.