Winter

Winter has crept over 45 Linwood Ave slowly, stretching her fingers into our house like it was a pair of her well-worn gloves, and creeping between the cedar shingles like a thief. While she makes the new furnace work harder, the careful latticework dance of ice over the windows and the gentle settling of the wooden floor continue, well-rehearsed from over a century’s worth of meetings. The city has changed and so have the names, but the winter remembers every inch of our house.

What helps us ignore the cold is it’s almost Christmas, and it’s good to have a steady layer of snow on the ground this time of year. We’ve stretched winking chains of lights across the front porch and into the bushes, but nothing feels quite so much like Christmas as looking out at all the white, while your mother hums carols and makes ornaments.

From the looks of things, you got fairly involved in the wrapping of presents this year.

We anticipate you not having more than a cursory interest in wrapping anything for the next several years – it’s the opening of presents that you’ll enjoy. I don’t know how your mom finds time to do it all – but she’s wrapped a hundred presents already if she’s wrapped one. As you grow up, you’ll see, your mom LOVES Christmas. Maybe it runs in the family.

 If anyone wonders where the idea came from for our Christmas cards this year (they’re in the mail!), it was costumes your Aunt sent us from Florida. You make a pretty darn good penguin.

You also make a heck of a Reindeer…

 …when you’re not chewing on your costume.

Of course, no preparation for the Yule is complete without a tree…your mom and dad’s first “real” tree (even though the one this year came in a box from Target – next year we’ll get a real tree) .  We all gathered around as a family to decorate it (and yes, you had yet another costume – this one was Dad’s fault).

 Just like your Dad, you love bright and shiny things (or are, at least, easily amused by them). The tree’s lights are a new part of our daily staring routine (they may even edge out the ceiling fans).

 By Christmas morning, you’ll have accomplished a lot, little one. Three months down, almost all of your family met…and you’re starting to get pretty vocal, not mention a lot more active. Mom and Dad are looking forward to having many more holidays with you, but this one will always stand out in our minds as your first, even after you’ve long forgotten it. We’ll write again soon…

 

 

You’ll shoot yer eye out!

Christmas is upon us. We promise you a nice, long blog update with lots of new photos from your latest adventures…but for now, your first picture with Santa will have to do…as a penguin! We didn’t get to take this one….