 | Diary Navigation:
|
December 17, 2001
Monday December 17th, 2001.
We are having a truly magical lead-up to Christmas this year. Pixie is VERY excited by all the extra-ordinary activities and events of the season. She’s old enough to be aware that ‘something special’ is going on, and I’ve been slowly telling her what Christmas-time is all about. She’s extremely curious about it all, and has cottoned-on far quicker than I imagined. And so the festivities are in full-swing in our household, although I’ve realised that Jay and I really need to sit-down this year and decide (in a thoughtful, far-thinking kind of way) exactly how we want to celebrate Christmas, and what emphasis we want placed on various aspects of the festive season.
Take ‘presents’ for example…..Pixie has already latched-on to the exciting prospect that Santa will come (sometime “soooooon”) and leave presents under the tree. She talks about this often…and she “pretends” to open presents all the time…I guess it’s because she had a birthday recently and she’s realised what presents are all about. She pretends to open make-believe presents (ripping paper sound-effects and all…ha!) and then she gets this really surprised look on her face and she gasps. If I prod her she’ll tell me what’s inside her imaginary gift….usually it’s a “dolly” but sometimes it’s a “book”…once it was even a “dummy”….ha! But I’m just a little bit nervous about the emphasis she’s placing on the presents part of Christmas…I want Christmas to be about so much more. I know presents are the fun bit for kids, but I don’t want Pixie to be ‘spoiled’…you know? I wonder if Jay and I shouldn’t limit what we give her at Christmas, because if kids get too much then they don’t play with anything properly. I’d rather she got two or three things and loved them all enormously. But it’s hard to control myself. I see all these great things in the toyshops and bookshops and I just want to buy, buy, buy. But it bugs me, it doesn’t sit right in my heart, so I’m going to have to think long and hard about the whole ‘present’ issue. A few of the things I’ve got stashed away for Pixie’s santa-sack might end up under the ‘wishing tree’ and given to a needy child.
Anyway, for anyone vaguely interested, this is what santa’s probably giving Pixie this year: a Winnie the Pooh story-book, a Maisy Christmas book, a pop-up toaster for her kitchen corner, a Mrs Potato head, a wooden sorting box, a set of farm animals and a farm barn, two videos, and two bath toys. It’s not a huge blow-out I guess, but I still worry that it’s too much. The silly thing is that Pixie probably wants a dolly – you know, one of those ones with a nappy and a dummy and all those baby-accessories. But she’s already got two baby dolls (but they don’t have dummy’s and dummy-holes in their mouth which she loves!) and I don’t want her to end up with hundreds of dolls – but if she were to ask Santa for something I’m pretty sure it’d be a dolly. Oh well…..what’s a mum to do?
One of the great traditions we started this festive season was to attend our National Carols by Candlelight concert. It was a grand affair, bigger than I expected, and Pixie LOVED it. It was a cold windy night and an outdoor concert…so we rugged up in coats and santa-hats and we even took a blanket for Pixie…it was all rather weird, because Carol nights are usually warm and balmy in Australia! We took a picnic of BBQ chicken and Turkish bread, apple cider, a custard tart for Pixie, bought some candles when we arrived, and Pixie was terribly excited by it all. There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of families there, all sprawled out on the lawns in front of Parliament House. On centre stage was a huge Christmas tree and during the concert they switched on the lights and Pixie loved it. She talked about it for days afterwards, about the big tree and about Santa (who arrived during the concert). We even got our picture in the local Sunday paper when they did a spread on the concert. There we were, close-up and personal, our santa hats on, our candles almost blowing out in the wind, an intense scowl on Pixie’s face (she didn’t trust the photographer!). It was hilarious. I wish I could post the picture here for you all to see. I sent a copy to my Mum and she was terribly excited. Jay’s mum got a copy blown up to A4 size and she’s having it laminated! Hee-hee-hee!! We’re famous locals now!
That same weekend we put up our Christmas tree and our animated Santa, pulled out the nativity set and strung the Christmas lights. I can’t get over how magical it all is. Pixie is really interested in everything. She plays with the santa, loves playing with the nativity set - whenever she sees one when she’s out she says “Look, baby Jesus.” The tree looks beautiful in our family room, against the window, and I turn the kitchen and family-room lights off at night (after the dishes are done) so that only the coloured tree-lights and Santa’s candle are glowing. Along with the coloured lantern-lights we’ve strung around the pergola outside it all looks sparkly and magical.
And we’ve been thoroughly enchanted with all the homes around town that have put on amazing light and decoration displays in their front yards. Two of our very close neighbours have amazingly decorated houses, and we’ve discovered quite a lot in our suburb (a trend I shall hopefully join next year!! Hee-hee). But last night we discovered an absolute beauty in one of our neighbouring suburbs. It’s a big house on a hill and I spied the twinkling-light extravaganza when we were about 2 kms away!!! When we arrived and parked out the front of this house Pixie murmured from the backseat, “Oh wow.” They had lights EVERYWHERE. It’s a big two-storey house that was lit up like a christmas tree, the front yard was crammed with a scene of santa’s workshop: everywhere you looked there were painted wooden elves making toys. They had cut-out kangaroos with santa hats on (a favourite with Pixie), and a life-size nativity, a huge santa and his sleigh and reindeers on the roof, and all their windows were draped with tinsel and had little Christmas scenes on the window ledges. All their trees were draped with blinking lights, and the entire house, roof and fences were all twinkling too. We stayed about 20 minutes and Pixie was struck-dumb. While we were there about 30 other car-loads of families with pyjamaed-children turned up to see the spectacle. As we left Pixie made us promise to return to see it again. I am so impressed with people who decorate their houses like this. It must take so much time, money and effort, but it is an amazing experience for the children. A wonderful tradition to drive around and see these incredible displays. And it’s really quite a radical thing to do when you think about it. Most of us stay locked away in our suburban houses, not knowing each other and not drawing attention to ourselves. But then, when christmas arrives, people decorate their houses for the entire city to see and share. I adore it. It warms my heart that people go to so much trouble to share the magic of Christmas.
And yes, we had our huge Christmas party here just this Saturday gone by. It was amazing. I’d invited all the families from our playgroup (about 20) and Jay invited all his workmates and their families (about 10)….so we ended up with about 30 adults and 20 kids. It was a warm sultry afternoon, threatening thunder-storms all day, but at 4 o’clock when the first guests arrived it suddenly cleared and the sun burst through… (I’d done a lot of sun-chants and backyard sun-dances in the hours leading up to the party!!!)
The backyard was teeming with toys and trikes and ride-on cars, tables and chair, Christmas lights and a colourful gazebo…I put on some fiesta-music and Jay cranked up the barbie and it was wonderful. It was a late-afternoon BBQ, everyone bought a plate of food. We had a massive table of salads and breads, BBQ vegetables and veggie-burgers (most people we know are committed vegetarians) outside. Then indoors our dining table was laden with deserts and christmas treats and fruit and cheese platters.
There are a couple of ways in which I measure the success of a party… Firstly, it’s whether anyone dances at any point during the event. If people end up dancing, then it’s a damn good sign in my eyes. Second measure is how many people end up on your bed!! HA! HA! HA! Truly, I think a party is a huge success if people feel comfortable enough to rifle through your entire house and end up sitting on your bed for a chat! Well that’s what happened at our bash! At some point one of the girls asked me about our ‘family bed’ set up (we have Pixie’s single futon jammed up against our double futon and our bedroom is like one huge low-to-the-floor bed!) Anyway, she asked if she could have a look, because she’s looking to buy a futon. And so up we traipsed to the bedroom only to be followed by half of the party!!! I ended up with about 7 women, 5 kids, and a couple of guys in our bedroom (unfolded washing sprawled over the bed and all) discussing everything from beds, to sleeping with kids, to breastfeeding in bed. The kids were spilling peanuts in the bed and everyone rolled around to test how hard the futon was(VERY hard was the general consensus)! I loved the fact that I didn’t care that everyone had piled into our bedroom. I loved the fact that THEY didn’t care about jumping on our bed in our messy bedroom. I realised that somehow or other I’ve ended up with some really cool friends up here, people that don’t stand on ceremony. People I am happy to share my messy bedroom and hard-mattress with! Ha! Ha! Double ha!
Anyway, we ended up with a bit of a disco happening too! Well, my sun-mantras must’ve stopped working because about 20 minutes after we’d finished the barbecuing it started bucketing down with rain. Yikes! Everyone huddled indoors while a few of the guys dashed madly around the backyard trying to save things from the rain. We carted all the left-over food indoors and guess what? Rain or no, the party continued full-steam ahead! I’d filled our sunken lounge-room with about 100 balloons for the kids (which they, and many of the adults too) ADORED, and at one point one of the guys suggested it’d be great to have some dancing in the ‘balloon room’ (as everyone had started calling it!). Well, it doesn’t take much prompting from me and before you know it I’d dug out my 60’s, 70’s and 80’s party cd’s and we were off. Everyone grabbed their babies and toddlers and started dancing in a circle, babes in arms. It was hilarious! Honestly, I had imagined it, but I had dared not to hope that with babies in tow and guys that hadn’t really met before, that we’d end up DANCING!!! We jived to The Jackson’s, we did the Nutbush, we cracked out a few old 80’s tracks most of us remembered only too well. Someone had a digital camera and took heaps of photos of everyone dancing in the balloon-room, so HOPEFULLY I’ll track them down and post some party pics on Pixie’s online album.
At one point a bunch of people and kids were even playing cricket in the rain. I mean, how festive is that? So our Christmas party was a cracking success!!! I had a ball! And believe it or not nothing got broken and there are no new stains on the carpet!!! Yee-haw!!! I am terribly impressed that we’ve only lived here for one year (exactly) and we managed to pull off a party with 50 guests who all had a brilliant time! I am truly thankful that our move to this new city has proven so successful. One year ago when we moved to Canberra I wasn’t at all sure what we were in for, I guess our Christmas party was our way of celebrating all we’ve achieved, all we’ve discovered, the friendships we’ve formed, and the sense of ‘home’ that we’ve uncovered here.
It was symbolic that just before the party Jay finally managed to gather up all the moving boxes that had been cluttering our garage for this past year, and he took them to the recycling depot. Afterwards I said to him, “Well, it’s taken a year, but I finally feel like we’ve completely unpacked, sorted out the house and we’ve settled in.” It feels like we’ve really ‘arrived’. The moving boxes are all gone, we’ve had our picture in the local paper, and we’ve had our first big party! I guess we’re well and truly locals now!!!!!!!
It’s been a pretty eventful and amazing year so I guess we’re just going to keep on celebrating. This weekend coming we’ll pack our bags and drive the 8 hours (over two days) to Victoria for Christmas with family and friends. We’ll be away for two weeks and no doubt loving every minute of it. We’re actually starting to get quite excited about the trip. There’s something terribly liberating about jumping in your car and hitting the highway! We travel about 4 hours on the first day, then stay overnight at a quaint little town with a charming old main street and a few good shops. We usually arrive in time for tea and a romp through a delightful park we found by the river, then we all fall asleep together in a motel bed with crisp white streets while watching some silly movie (ie. National Lampoon’s vacation). In the morning we usually do some exploring of the shops and parks, and have a long leisurely roadhouse breakfast with all the trimmings: namely eggs and bacon and coffee (a rare treat in this dieter’s world). Hopefully Pixie will sleep during the trip, although I’m a little nervous. She only has one sleep these days, at about 1pm, and even then somedays she doesn’t really seem to need it. So if we hit the road at 11am we’ll technically have two hours before she’ll get sleepy. ACH! It could be a loooooooong two hours…Pixie doesn’t suffer physical-constriction gladly!
On the second day it’ll be a 3 ½ hour trip onto Melbourne to stay overnight with friends we haven’t seen since Easter-time. Then the next day we’ll travel the 1 ½ hour trip to our home town, Ballarat for a traditional Christmas with my family. We haven’t been back since Easter, so I’m looking forward to it. It’s a charming old gold-rush town – with big grand streets, gorgeous old architecture, and lots of statues and a definite sense of history. It has one of Australia’s award-winning tourist attractions which we plan to visit (tourists in our home-town, how weird!). It’s called Sovereign Hill and is a reconstruction gold-mining town – complete with mine-shafts, gold-panning, old school buildings and bowling-alleys, theatres and churches…everything just as it looked in the 1850’s. All the staff walk around in period costume. Pixie should love it, and I have an urge to go back to my home-town and soak it all in – tourist attractions and all.
So we’re looking forward to a action-packed holiday, being tourists, catching up with old friends, visiting family, revisiting favourite old haunts, and a traditional Christmas at my mums’ house. It’s all very exciting.
I won’t get another chance to write before the new year, so I want to take this moment to wish all our readers and cyber-friends a TRULY MAGICAL CHRISTMAS SEASON, and a SAFE AND PEACEFUL NEW YEAR!!! Thank you for all your support, kindness and generosity throughout this past year…keeping this diary really is an important part of my parenting-experience, and I truly appreciate the support, encouragement and friendships I have made here.
Accept our best wishes this Christmas season, God bless, and we’ll catch up in 2002!
Much love,
Eloise, Pixie and Jay.
 |  |
|
want to keep a diary on iParenting?
Authoring a diary on the iParenting network allows you to chronicle your family's story, preserving it for years to come. It's also a great way to get the most out of the iParenting community. Click here to start...
|
The iParenting Media Awards program helps parents find the best products for their families. 
