fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la

I just finished eating a piece of my mother's fruitcake. Now I know that fruitcake gets a bad rap, but that is from people who have not tasted my mother's fruitcake. I may have a slight buzz from it. /hic/

Shmoo's and Roo's ages are so fun for Christmastime. Shmoo is so excited about it. We said we couldn't decorate until after Thanksgiving, so he was raring to go yesterday. I got out the bins of decorations and Christmas books yesterday. Today he wanted to get a Christmas tree, but HPR was working, so Shmoo decorated our ficus instead. Later in the morning, Fritchie cat was sniffing around it from the back of the couch and then started to climb it. Of course I couldn't get to the camera in time. Looks like we'll have a Christmas tree climber.

This was Fritchie's first full day out of her seclusion in the playroom. We separated the cats for 8 days so they could get used to each others' smells. There has been a bit of hissing and chasing today, but otherwise the introduction has been going quite smoothly. We have food and litter boxes out in several places so that no one feels cornered. (It helps, too, that most of our rooms connect to a circle of hallways, providing multiple escape routes.)

The kids also enjoyed playing with Shmoo's nativity set. Roo made the Virgin Mary slide down the manger roof over and over again, whee! Which reminds me of these cute photos of Shmoo and Noah playing with the nativity set three years ago, and the way Shmoo pushed the donkey around making bus noises. It also reminds me of the dramas my siblings and I would enact with our nativity sets. Especially memorable was the year the baby Jesuses (babies Jesus?) ran away from home. Mine wasn't removable from his manger, so he had to "walk" down the hallway toting the feedbox on his back. (Brings new meaning to "if you lived here, you'd be home by now.")

Shmoo expressed a bit of concern about our lack of a mantel from which to hang stockings. "We should have bought a house with a fireplace!" Technically speaking, our Philly house didn't have a fireplace either, although it had a fake mantel with a fireplace-like opening (shown in the photos linked above). Anyway, the issue is dodged this year because we will bring the kids' stockings with us to my sister's place, which has a fireplace.

Comments

[SteveO]

I think the correct term is Jesi. Speaking of which, I dusted my bookshelves in August and discovered I still hadn't taken down my nativity set fro the past Christmas. Oops! It's great to hear the latest from your household.

[Phil Jones]

We know a family whose son (now in college) used to refer to the collection of animals and figures that his mother had made over the years for their Christmas mantle decoration as his "activity set." Activity, Nativity; maybe at Easter they had a Passivity set? I must ask.

[Jennifer]

...Oh, SteveO beat me to it. Although I would have gone with Baby Jesii.