Do you see what I see?

When we tracked my pregnancy due date, I was sort of crushed.  It was supposed to be our final Talbert Christmas with Nana before we started our own family Christmas tradition (last year being our final Gulley Christmas).  As excited as I was for a new baby, not being able to travel home and spend Christmas at Nana's house in Michigan was devastating.  I wanted the home feeling.  I wanted the snow.  I wanted the frozen lake to take you and Daddy ice skating and walking to the islands.  I wanted the snowy hills I sled down.  I wanted the annual scavenger hunt to the bridge around Maple Island with Nana's rhyming handwritten clues in color coded papers to remind me of my Grandpa pulling me aside to help me with riddles when I got stuck.  I wanted you to have the games and the cupboard of toys we enjoyed.  I wanted Nana and Grandma's cooking to permeate.  I wanted the crafts, the baking, the rekindling of my memories to make new savory memories for you.  Everyone balked at my whining.  You have a miracle baby!  How can you complain?  But I ached inside and I couldn't help but mourn.  Our last Christmas at Nana's was going to be so entirely glorious.

As you are learning, Nana goes all out elfkin.  She made Christmas for us when I was young.  She might have had to work other holidays, but she was always present for Christmas.  I can't do anything Christmas without feeling her.  When I wrap presents I yearn for her Claus powers.  She can turn paper and ribbon in fantastic bundles I want to just stare at and never open.  She has a unique north pole gene.  She decked our house head to toe, bedroom to bedroom, in hand sewn Christmas decor complete with personalized placemats with our names hand sewn on them.  I so desperately wanted you to feel her Christmas magic.

Now, Christmas season is here and my lonely whimpers are a faint echo hollowed from the screams and shouts of your toddler go tell it on the mountain top Christmas jubilee.  My past and Michigan hopes are carried to the attic of time.  Because today is the first day of December.  We wake up opening advent windows and gluing on cotton balls to Santa's beard.  We take our morning Christmas pajama walk to my attempt for some Christmas light exterior attention.  It might not be night blinding but we did it together.  We discuss our day and plans to go to the National Christmas Tree Lighting as you bob about in your reindeer antler hat.

When we start the car for My Gym class and magically turn on the Christmas station to The Drummer Boy I here, "it's my song!" and I reach to pump it up and drum my swollen carpel tunnel fingers against the wheel and turn my head back to see my baby smiling to the beat of his song, drumming his hands on the sides of carseat, and with that precious little toddler tune singing out, "cooome they told me..." and I am carried away in the moment forgetting all things location because being here and now with you is the only place I want to be.

"Said the night wind to the little lamb

Do you see what I see

Way up in the sky little lamb

Do you see what I see

A star, a star

Dancing in the night

With a tail as big as a kite

With a tail as big as a kite"

You make everything special.  This Christmas might not be in my dream location, but it's with my dream family.  Your excitement makes my excitement.  I treasure your Santa, reindeer, and Frosty loving musical heart.  I love it that you beg to wear your Christmas jammies round the clock and pout your lips if I mention (gasp!) clothes.  When we hung the stockings up together, it hit me that this is our last Christmas with only three stockings upon the mantle.  We have years of Christmas traditions ahead.    You are only two and you have this incredible ability to make me forget everything else and feel nothing but the joy of your world.  You have always had that power!  You are my Mooncake, my Nutcracker Prince, my wild little Drummer Boy.  Christmas is where ever we are-together.