Christmas Joy

On Friday, the day before Christmas Eve, we decided to go ice skating. My work let everyone out two hours early, so we decided to make the most of it. Luckily there is a rink 15 minutes away. One thing about introducing new things to Madie is you have to break her in slowly. She wasn't immediately sold on the idea of putting on these weird 'special boots' (as we called them) and walking around on the ice. So, we started out slow. I took her out and held her as I took a few laps. She was watching some of the other girls wearing pink while ice-skating (very impressionable). After two minutes, she was willing to let me put her down so she could walk next to me while I skated slowly. She took a couple of laps around, was still watching the girls in pink with 'special boots', and then pronounced "Otay, special boots Dadda?" YES! So we went back to the changing area, put on her special boots, and headed out on the ice. The rest is history, she was sold on it. Mal and I took turns holding her hand or arms, letting her get a sense of balance and how the skates work. She cried when we had to leave.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house...Poor Madie was sick with a stomach aroused. She had a 24-hour flu bug, for lack of a better rhyming word. She actually woke up on Christmas Eve morning with it. I'll spare you the details, but we did wash her pillow case and sleeping bag two times that day. It lasted through the night of Christmas Eve. I ended up camping out with her in the living room, and she actually ended up sleeping very well the rest of the night. Thankfully, it was gone by the morning. 

We were going to open presents after our 9:00 am, one-hour church meeting, but at about 5:15 am Madie whispered to me "Dadda, water." She repeated it a few times in a really soft voice until I fell out of my coma and got her a water bottle. After that, we were up! I figured, why not just open them now? I mean, Santa obviously came! So we got Mal up and had a lot of fun opening presents with Madie. Christmas is so much more fun with kids. Madie has been so obsessed with Frosty the Snowman, Santa Clause, reindeer, etc. It's been a really fun season. Madie got some rain boots, ornaments, coloring books, princess attire, a new doll...needless to say she was very pleased. She loved opening presents. She did almost refuse to open her other presents once she pulled the doll out of her stocking though. Mal got a Martha Stewart encyclopedia, fleece, and some jewelry. I got a camera for Christmas, which I am having a lot of fun with! I wish I could have had it for December though, especially with the fun things we did leading up to Christmas. Grateful for it either way.