The holiday season. December 3, 2008

It’s hard to believe that Madeline is now in her 3rd holiday season. The case can be made that this will be her first where she really knows what’s going on. Definitely she does – but that’s what I said last year! Over the weekend we put up our Christmas tree and it was a hit (even before we got it out of the box!) Dad and Madeline went to Arpico Superstore on a rainy Saturday morning and got in to the holiday spirit. This normally tacky and overdone store is over the top for the holidays – meters upon meters of decorations, glitter, and lights. Really quite impressive. As far as I can tell, the country of Sri Lanka really gets into Christmas. There are already decorations everywhere around Colombo and there’s quite a festive air to things here.
Maddie really got into the decorations. Her friend Sonya came over to help and the two of them, once they discovered that it was fun, removed and replaced ornaments a million times in a row. Like all little kids, they don’t get the idea of spreading out decorations over the whole tree, but rather pile them all on one branch.
Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving twice. Mainly this was because we did not get Thursday or Friday off of work (first time ever!) and some people chose to offer Thanksgiving on the actual day itself, while others waited for the weekend. On Thursday, we joined some other American teachers at the school and headed to a US Embassy house for quite an impressive turkey spread, complete with Monday night football (?). Then again on Saturday, friends at school had a gathering that was more like a party than a dinner – much more revelry. Dad couldn’t revel too much, however, as he picked up a nasty bacteria in Mumbai the week before that he couldn’t shake without powerful antibiotics.
Madeline had an exceptionally good time at both gatherings. Thursday saw her running around endlessly with kids her age, including Amy, in a big house with lots of toys. She was so obsessed with having a good time that we could not get any Thanksgiving food into her). Saturday was a bit more mellow since Amy wasn’t there and the kids who were there spent most of the evening watching Christmas shows on TV.
Amy and Madeline are really starting to interact on higher levels. They will run off on their own and play together, constantly engaged in conversation (sometime intelligible to others, sometimes not). They always have to be doing the same thing, and more often than not it’s Amy who is imitating Madeline, or defending herself against Madeline’s over-the-top playful aggression. We’ve not heard any reports of naughtiness at the Little House lately so they must have settled down there. The Little House closes for the winter break next Thursday so the last week of school we’ll have to be more creative in finding things for her to do.  That doesn’t seem to be a problem for this kid – as long as she has paints, pens, paper, and play-doh, she’s happy.
As Mom’s belly continues to grow, Madeline seems to understand that there is a baby inside (…yeah right!) She keeps talking about her ‘baby sister’ and understands that only mommy has a baby inside – not daddy, and not Maddie. Mom’s health has seen a lot of ups and downs lately.