some seasonal photos

Thought I'd share some Christmas photos. There are approximately 1000 of them, so I just chose a few at random. I got a large quantity of photos but none of them are particularly great. But you can see their Christmas PJs (courtesy of grandma, of course) and some of their gifts on Christmas morning.








And lest you think I forgot, as promised I finally got around to making Eli a matching hat - a year late and in a different color because I ran out of the original blue, but whatever. I just cast on Andy's, so they will have matching hats this winter after all.

here they are warming up after a trip to the arboretum with dad:

Christmas, blah blah blah.

Those of you know know me well know that I suffer from a chronic and serious dearth of holiday cheer (manic stocking knitting might provide evidence to the contrary, but the truth there is that I just really like to knit). Andy has managed to soften me up to it a little bit over the past several years, and having kids has done some work in that department too - but honestly, my inner core of grinch remains pretty intact. My anti-Christmas ire is complicated and not really worth exploring in this medium, but a Christmas hater like myself is put in a pretty tight spot when kids are involved. There are just certain things you have to do with little kids and I think pretending to be really into Christmas (provided you don't have a good reason to not be into Christmas, like being Jewish) is one of them.

So pretend I will (and do), but I have my limits. I'm not sure if this is the year I'm going to totally enrage everyone by refusing to get into Santa, or if I can put that off until next year. Either way, people will be enraged, you can be certain of that. I don't think Owen is really hip to Santa yet - he does recognize him (unfortunately, he's stopped calling him "Bobby" which he did all last Christmas season, and which I found hillarious) but the whole north pole/toy workshop/round the world in one night/naughty or nice list - I don't think we're there yet. I think we will be next year, and honestly, I just can't picture myself really going with it. I don't mind having Santa be any one of a number of fictional characters that we talk about/read about/watch but I don't see any reason that Santa can't be like Elmo. No one goes to elaborate lengths to convince their kids that Elmo is real, and kids seem to be pretty into Elmo all the same. And I'm pretty sure that my children will still be big fans of Christmas without us acting as if Santa is an actual real person. I'm not planning on denouncing Santa as a fraud, exactly, but the fact that Owen saw me purchase most of what is going in his stocking doesn't bother me one bit. If he has a tacit understanding that the presents he gets on Christmas are actually from me, so much the better, as far as I'm concerned. But then, as we've already discussed, I'm a grinch. A scrooge. Bah, humbug.

So anyway, here we go with the holidays. I'm tired already, and it's not even Christmas Eve. But for those of you with a more normal appreciation of the season, merry merry, happy, happy, cheer cheer, etc. etc. Lots of exciting things happening for Team Cox in 2011, or that's what it looks like from here anyway, and I'm genuinely excited about what's in store. So from our house to yours, enjoy the last few days of 2010 however you celebrate them (or don't), let me know if you didn't get one of our holiday cards and want one, and I'll be back in the new year with more misanthropy (and pictures of cute kids).

Add it to the list of things I did that my kids will never appreciate.

and boy, are my arms tired.

as predicted, Owen is now demanding he actually wants the Santa one. No, the snowman. No, the santa. So for this year, I'll just not put names on them and when he makes a firm decision I'll embroider their names. This year I think assigning stockings just might be asking for trouble. And why I didn't just make them the same, I'll never know. Chalk it up to parenting being a learning process.

and here's a photo of them together:



I really need to put a face on that snowman. But I've tried a couple times and it keeps coming out cruddy. I'll try again, since the santa has a face it looks bad that the snowman doesn't.

Christmas Ambition

So the good news is the stocking I've been knitting for Owen is finally blocked, sewn and finished (except for embroidering his name at the top, which I've been putting off in case he ends up wanting the Santa instead of the snowman). The bad news is that it's now December 1, and Owen's took me a good 2 months to complete. So my suspicion is that in the true second-child fashion, Elias won't have a stocking this year. Oh well. By next year...

edit: after I posted this I looked and the perspective is totally wonky in that picture. The stocking is actually a pretty good size but the foot is not that disproportionately big to the neck. I think it was the angle I took the photo at. Also, the colors look better in person. My phone is not the greatest camera.