Dec 27 2002
Magical Moments
Our Christmas was truly a magical one. We were able to get Sammy to sleep in by bringing him into bed with us, so we had a nice, slow start to the day, replete with lots of family snuggling 
Finally, the moment came when Sammy could take it no longer and had to get out of bed. I headed into the kitchen to get him something to drink and turned around just in time to see him do a double-take when he saw all that Santa had left for him during the night. That didn’t slow him down much, though, because he had his mind set on the milk I was pouring into a sippy cup.
Pretty soon after we had taken care of such important things, Uncle will came stumbling out of his room to join us where we were gathered around the Christmas tree. I tried to get Sammy to rip open his packages, but even though he was obviously curious about them, he wouldn’t touch them. There’s no telling what was going through his mind…he did just fine on his first birthday opening gifts. Sammy was delighted with everything. He liked his farm animal puzzle, choo choo train, magna doodle, his shape-sorter/block set and especially his broom. He drug that thing around the house all morning and was reluctant to part with it long enough for us to remove it from the packaging.
I didn’t do half badly either. Robert handed me a piece of paper which he had lodged in the branches of the tree. I opened it up and discovered a photograph of another piece of paper laying at the foot of my monster philodendron. I retrieved that piece of paper and found another photograph of another piece of paper. I followed this photographic trail all around the house until it led me to a box stowed away in the attic.
By this time, I had a pretty good idea what lay inside, but I was so excited about it, I was reluctant to open it. I just wanted to savor the excitement for as long as possible. My delaying tactics only worked for so long before Robert & Will were ready to throttle me. I gave in and opened the box.
Inside was a Canon Powershot G2!!!!! I had been drooling over this camera for months on end. I was thrilled! It’s such a great camera. I’ve got so much to learn about photography, but even with all the bumbling around I’ve done, the photos look 10 times better than what I was normally able to accomplish with the older camera. It even makes short video clips. You can see one of Sammy being tickled by his father on my photoblog. There’s a link for this beneath the large random photo.
My brother also surprised the heck out of me by giving me a Wacom graphic tablet. Need I say I was excited about that? We’re having trouble getting it to work on my computer. I e-mailed support and am hoping they’ll get back to me soon with a solution. I’m anxious to start drawing! I’m so spoiled!!
While it was a wonderful, wonderful Christmas, I’m also glad it’s over and done with. My stress level has plummeted ten-fold. I feel so much more relaxed today. Everything went OK, despite all my anxieties about it. Having pizza for Christmas dinner was just right, and not at all the depressing experience I had imagined it would be. Frankly, I wasn’t very hungry after all the cookies and candy I had stuffed myself with earlier in the day 
Somehow, I need to stop holding myself to the impossible ideal of motherhood which I have concocted and realize it’s ok–and even good–to let things go once in awhile.
