I was working this Christmas and while it was quite quiet in the hospital, it was a busy week because we had family over to visit resulting in little sleep and recovery. I had just gotten over sinusitis, which left me with a residual cough again, so it seems like I have been sick since August!
Everett is 4 years old and he is totally into Christmas at this age. He knows all about Santa. Everett is still a little reluctant to approach Santa Claus, but he overcomes his fears enough that he forces himself to sit on his lap and tell Santa Claus what he would like for gifts. As usual, Everett is very sure of himself. He had decided that he wanted 3 things, and those were the 3 things that he stuck to: A Transformers Bumblebee, a Transformers Chase, and Jerome from SuperWings. He told Santa this at the mall, Santa at the Santa’s breakfast at the Black Night Inn, and all other Santa’s that he had encountered.
Sierra never managed to warm up to Santa, and was too afraid to have him approach at all. She did know what she wanted however – basically anything Moana related. This was easy because Sierra had a pair of Moana socks, and she would refuse to take them off all, and wouldn’t let us wash them, or take them off when she went to bed. She got a Moana doll for her birthday which she loved.
The two kids learned about the naughty and nice list. Everett would say things to Sierra like, “You’re on the naughty list!” when he didn’t like what Sierra was doing. Then Sierra would get upset and yelled back at him, “No! You’re on the naughty list!” And then they would both get into yelling matches even though Sierra didn’t really quite know what was going on. She did eventually come to know that that meant being not good and certainly you did not want to be on the “naughty list.”
Everett pretended to be various dinosaurs over the Christmas period. His favorite had been a Stegosaurus, so he would be “Steggy” and would walk around on all fours pretending to be such a dinosaur, occasionally leaning back on to you so that his plates would stab you. Sierra picked this up but she wanted to be Piggy, the character from Moana. So when we would refer to Sierra, she would say, “No Peeggy!” wanting us to call her that. Here’s a picture of our little Piggy.
And here is Steggy being a good big brother.
Everett got a nice haircut just prior to Christmas. Look, he is such a big boy now, not crying when getting his haircut and looking so handsome.
As the days counted down towards Christmas, Everett started getting anxious about presents. He enjoyed wrapping presents, like wrapping up a couple of his favorite books, and then opening them up. When we set out the presents, he searched around for the ones that had his name on it.
It’s handy knowing how to spell and read your name isn’t it? Just at this time, he started running his own name as well!
Actually, it’s a good question what happened to the gingerbread house…
Learning from our mistakes couple of years back, we extended the Christmas Day present opening event over a couple of days. On Christmas Eve, we opened our first presents.
Everett wrote out a letter to Santa Claus, as well as put out some cookies for the man himself, along with carrots for Rudolph. All of a sudden this month, Everett decided to do a lot of writing and drawing!
Christmas Day finally arrived. Everett managed to sleep in until 6 AM! He then peeked over the balcony into the great room and noticed that Santa had arrived and dropped off several presents! Of course, he let us know, and while we tried to get him to go back to bed, it didn’t work.
Merry Christmas!
