Month: December 2011

Thanks to the Anti Bogan for the image.

Last Christmas, I was full of codeine, and the pain, though intense, was somewhat numbed by the drugs. This year, there are no drugs, and front and center in my brain is the fact that my babies should be celebrating their first Christmas with us. Ripping paper, and getting more excited by the wrapping paper than the presents, and conking out halfway through the day like a pair of aged hooligans.

Yesterday, a friends dad died. It wasn’t unexpected, but this Christmas is going to be sad for lots of families. A day of expectations, that many people find it hard to meet. I find it hard to meet any, and finding the festive “joy to all” spirit is proving a challenge.

So this year, I am sending a special thought out to everyone who can’t be with their loved ones this year, and those who don’t have anyone to love. The homeless, the dispossessed, and the refugees. And especially the bereaved.

Our Christmas charity this year will be SIDS & Kids, without whom this year would have been so much harder. Everyone knows that they do research on SIDS, and that they provide safe sleeping information for families, but it isn’t well known that they also provide counseling for bereaved parents, and their families and friends. Although counseling hasn’t made the horror go away, it does help a lot to know that the crazy is normal. Archie and Aubrey’s brief lives and then their deaths have changed me irrevocably. Eventually, I’d like to be able to say that I am a better person from having known the loss, and if I get there, SIDS & Kids will have been a bog part of that.

I’ll leave you with a little video from yesterday, Santa leaving the Pearl Beach Progress Hall after the chaos of meeting the local kids.

In his new postmodern t-shirt.

Here is our $5 K-Mart tree, with a lot of bling, including two dragonflies for the two members of our family that wont be with us this year.

Squish is loving the lights, and the sparkles, and the advent envelopes every day. Today, we counted up the money he has put in his piggy bank over the year, and tomorrow we are going to the toy shop so he can choose his own toy, and buy it with his own money. Its a nod to a tradition from my maternal grandparents. They would save up small change all year, and before Christmas each year Nanna would take us in to the bank in Martin Place where dad worked. Dad would put the money through the counting machine, and then give my brother and I the money, that we would then spend on Christmas presents for family, and choose something for ourselves. We would have fish and chips in Hyde Park, and then lit a candle in St Marys Cathedral.

And I am starting to enjoy Inigo’s joy in everything Christmas.

One of our advent calendar adventures was to have a special surprise dinner. I chose banana and pear pancakes, colored Christmas green, and made into Christmas shapes. On top you can see a tree with a star.