Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Christmas...December 25th

Christmas started for us all when the next door neighbours Tony and Linda with their kids Gemma and Russell came round to exchange presents with Maia. Gemma brought the newest addition to her seriously impressive range of baby buggies. This one was in a radioactively shiny pink material with hearts all over it and contained a baby that moved its eyes and cried and took milk from a bottle. Maia was smitten. I was spooked. The grown-ups opened some champers and chatted as Maia pushed the buggy about and looked avariciously at the rest of the presents.

According to Pat, Christmas Day is about eating, laying about, drinking, laying about, presents, watching crap telly and having another drink. So he wasn't overwhelmed with enthusiasm at our plan to take Maia walking in Cassiobury Park. At least he was, until it was made clear that he would have to come too.

It was pretty cold, so we bundled Miss Maia up in coat, gloves, hat (her not-very PC-Russian-furry-one, no less) and all tramped and huffed our way through a lovely walk in the woods. We saw a very cool canal boat pass through a lock, got adopted by a yappy dog and got very muddy trousers.

Back home (oooh warmth!) we decided it was 5pm somewhere in the world, and therefore not too early for a sherry. Christmas drinking is great - you get to drink all these things that you would never normally (sherry, Baileys, port, Tia Lusso etc etc) and ridiculously early too...

Before dinner we made an assault on the present mountain. Maia took equal interest in the wrapping paper as the contents, which was up from last year's total focus on the crinkly shiny stuff that made presents interesting. Good haul for her this year - books, crayons, paints, puzzles, musical instruments, DVDs, more books, clothes, teddies, loads of stuff.

Anyway, dinner was produced (details are a bit hazy, I have to admit...) and was very tasty. Maia blew out the candles and we sang Happy Birthday. Maia was an angel, and went to sleep pretty well. Again, though, the details are hazy...Pat put her to sleep while TV put me to sleep.

Happy Birthday Jesus.






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