Circum matrem et puerum
Children thrive with schedules, but not with your schedules. With theirs. And so our lovely happy bouncy child enjoyed a day of Christmas fun, but began to fret and shriek and growl about 5pm, and passed out entirely on the way to Christmas Eve at his great-gran’s. His bedtime is normally 7 or so and I just didn’t have the heart–or let’s face it, the guts–to wake him.
Instead, I dropped Matt off to be our family representative and then to sleep over at his folks, while I drove the desolate Christmas highway back home with our exhausted manger-baby (though you would need an extra-large manger for this one). I was greeted by a house that indeed smelled a little like a stable, since the cat missed the litter box again, but little lord Nathan neither awaked nor made crying, flopping instead into his manger like the passed-out partier that he was. The cattle didn’t low, but the cat meowed frantically for love and food.
It’s one of my stranger Christmas Eves–in fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever been alone on this particular day before. After settling Nathan I brought in the day’s haul of gifts, fed and petted the cat, and watched Antiques Roadshow a little while eating my Christmas bowl of cereal. Just me and Nathan and the cat, alone but warm and fed and relatively ok with the way things are. I’ve had worse.