An introduction to The Holidays

Peter just had his first Christmas. It was remarkable for the fact that it was his first Christmas, but it was also memorable because he hadn’t filled his diaper with the messy stuff since the Friday before (Christmas was on a Tuesday this year, so do the math). He was going to be wearing nice outfits for family gatherings, but we knew going that long without relieving himself was a recipe for disaster. So, when Christmas Eve morning dawned, Peter was given a steady diet of prunes. Lots of them. We thought we had stuck a little stick of dynamite down there, and after lighting the fuse had hid ourselves behind the nearest bolder to shield ourselves from the blast to come. No blast came. Just a giggling, if somewhat fatigued, Peter. His Aunt Sarah suggested the likely scenario: He’d poop, but only the following morning at church, in the middle of mass. One should always be cautious about laughing off prophecies, and we heeded her words, fearful of what the following morning could bring.

The afternoon of Christmas Eve saw us traveling to Auntie Trucker & Uncle John’s house in Whitefish Bay, where a sizable (yet incomplete) set of Peter’s Mom’s family was convening for a holiday feast. We were planning on staying the night and going to church in the morning, but when Aunt Mai and Uncle Siva were prevented from joining us due to work and a little trip to China the following day, everything changed. We wound up going to the evening mass at 5:00 with Peter’s Grandpa (mother-side), and then we’d head back home later at night so we could de-stress our son a little. It should also be noted that Peter understood that the past few days were not normal days, and so he did everything in his power to keep himself from being put down for a nap.

So we ran out to the mass and got there right as it started. I dropped off Peter, Mom and Grandpa, and parked the car. When I got to the church, Peter’s Mom advised me that due to the fact that the church was packed tighter than the Tokyo subway at rush hour, we would be sitting in the very front row (fortunately, though, we didn’t have to worry about whiter-than-white-gloves-wearing ushers pushing us into our seats like those Tokyo subway workers). Normally we sit in the middle of the pews. Always. Sitting up front was like suddenly finding yourself in a completely different church, or even the house of worship of another religion. I wouldn’t have been surprised if we were suddenly witnessing the sacrifice of a chicken. Anyway, Peter was a good boy, but his Grandpa was determined to have some fun with his grandson, and thus elicited a fair amount of laughs and minor screeches from him during the mass. When the service was complete, however, Peter still had not lightened his load.

We returned to Whitefish Bay for dinner and Peter took a short nap. He woke up in a foreign bed and cried to let us know that, but otherwise perked up nicely when it came time to open presents. As is often the case for a child of his age, his favorite present was the gift wrap. It crinkled so nicely and he could stick it in his moth and chew on it when his parents weren’t looking. He did get his mom’s finger stuck in his mouth once, though, fishing for a little bit of paper he was using as a chew toy. He didn’t care for the invasion, and pouted a little, but then crinkled up some more paper. As I’ve probably mentioned before, Peter is a party animal, and so he stayed up a long time that evening, all the way past 11:00 when we loaded him up and took him home. He slept pretty well that night, I can tell you.

Christmas morning saw me waking up around 7:45 and heading downstairs to commiserate with Peter’s other Grandpa and Auntie Sarah. Some time after 8:15 or so Peter’s Mom came down with Peter in her arms and exclaimed “Peter gave us our present!” and invited me to help clean it up. When we opened up his diaper, we saw that he did indeed provide us with just the gift we were looking for, and he wrapped it so well it didn’t leak out of his diaper. As I told my wife, “it’s a Christmas miracle!” and then a bunch of friends and neighbors came in and we all sang Auld Lang Syne. Oh, wait, that was It’s A Wonderful Life. No. We just cleaned up his fanny and hosed him down.

Later on I installed the new car seat his Grammy got him a few weeks back because he was growing out of his infant seat. Then we installed Peter into the seat, which he seemed to like a lot more than his old one, and drove him down to see his Gram. He was again showered with gifts (including a nice bouncy hobby horse with no springs that he liked a lot), and again he thought the wrapping paper was great fun. He was, however, pretty well exhausted by this time and crashed a couple of times during the afternoon. Again he’d wake up and give us the “I’m lying on a foreign bed and I don’t know where I am” cry to announce each nap was over. When dinnertime came, though, all signs of fatigue disappeared and he chatted up a storm. He also played a ducking-and-weaving game of hide-n-seek with his Auntie Sarah through a wine glass (um… it was a perspective thing, not like one of them could actually hide behind a wine glass. Neither of them is that small, nor were any of us such lushes as to need a wine glass the size of a barrel). Eventually, though, the four days of running around and partying caught up to Peter and he was fading by 8:00. We drove him home and he had a good, long sleep.

To sum up, Peter’s first Christmas was highlighted by three Ps: Partying, Paper, and Poop. Yes, infant constipation before Christmas brings new meaning to Advent. Excitement and expectation ultimately gave way to relief and heavy-duty cleaning. But once Peter slimmed down, so to speak, he was his happy, perky self. Now we just have to start preparing for his second Christmas…