Emily wrote a very sweet letter to the advent fairy last night and attached it to her little advent house full of drawers before she went to bed, saying that she would love and cherish whatever she found inside the boxes each day. As it happens, the advent fairy has left a fair old mixture of things this year, including little bath cubes and melts, three tiny glass owls and a eleven (one got broken!) tiny antique Christmas bells. Oh, and a chocolate each day, of course. A certain young lady was over the moon with a strawberry and vanilla bath melt heart this morning.
I honestly don't know whether Emily still believes in Father Christmas, the advent fairy (?? I'd never heard that one before, I think she made that one up herself years ago!) and so on. I think she *wants* to believe, but whether she really, genuinely still does or whether she's just humouring us, I can't quite tell. I know lots of families these days choose not to "do" Father Christmas, which is fair enough, but we couldn't resist when Emily was tiny, so....there you go. Personally, I don't believe it does any harm. I don't think Emily's going to be scarred for life when she does choose to stop believing/going along with it, and I think (or hope) that she'll appreciate the way we've always tried to make it a magical time for her. Not that Christmas can't be magical without the big guy in a red suit....but each to their own, of course, including us.
I guess for a school child (nearly) nine is a bit old to be believing in all that "stuff". One thing I'm certainly delighted about, though, is that Emily's free from that kind of peer pressure. She definitely has her own quite mystical world viewpoint, and I'm exceptionally pleased that she won't be being robbed of it any time soon by kids who are far too jaded far too early.
Anyway. Today Emily and I have put up two out of our three main Christmas trees, plus assorted smaller ones. Our main, main tree, upstairs in our sitting room, was quite a palava, as it involved completely re-arranging the entire room. Which was fun. It's lovely now it's done, though. Kittens have gone completely, utterly, isanely manic over the trees and decorations. What can I say? It's Mr Pome and JuJu from two years ago (their first Christmas) all over again. The small black things finally collapsed from exhaustion after Severus suffered a near death experience, choking on an extremely long piece of gold stuff. Had to drag him out from under a trolley where he was making dire noises, force his mouth open and yank the stuff from halfway down his throat. Not nice, for him or for me. Said gold stuff has now been banned.
As well as our main upstairs tree, we also put up one in the dining room/Emily's work room and Emily put up a small white one in her bedroom and a small pink one also in the dining room. The biggest tree of all, dating back to when I was a kiddie (sniff) will go up in Nana and Gramps' sitting room downstairs at some point soon.
Over the last few days, we've also been doing some nice window art (shown pre-window, lol), learning about the Phoenicians, practising yoga, doing lots of exercise and trying to get plans for Emily's Egyptian party straight in our heads (so I can avoid my usual last minute panic).
Yesterday we discovered that all five cats have fleas. Nice. We've never had fleas in the winter before :-( Hotfooted it out to the pet shop to get some flea tablets, since all our big cats **despise** the spot on treatments, which frankly don't seem to work in any case. Emily and I also went into InStore and picked up some bargains for her party. Well, it would have been a shame not to, since it was practically next door ;-) Got home and successfully persuaded Cassie-cat, Romeo, Voldemort and Severus to take a tablet each crushed up and cunningly disguised in whiskas cat milk. Juliet was a different story. Juliet is either very smart or far too naturally suspicious. She wasn't fooled for a second. So with only one tablet left, Jon and my Dad donned gloves and protective clothing and tried to give it to her the old fashioned way. Their scars may take a while to heal. Tablet retrieved from behind the settee, we tried putting it in cat food, smothering it in butter, hiding it in ham and all sorts of other malarky. Nothing. Tablet now unrecoverable mush. Juliet still has fleas. Which of course means our other, currently flea-free felines, will soon have fleas again too. Cheers, JuJu.
Oh yes, the other big news of today was that we finally sorted out collars for the kibbies. It was our second attempt - we ordered some beautiful, stunning velvet collars for them the other day which were absolutely lovely when they arrived - but which were far too big and on which the safetey elastic was next to useless. So we had to re-order some others and although the choice was, shall we say, limited in kibby size, we did manage to find one blue with stars and moons and one black with the same design. Severus has been given the black one, as we figure he's less likely to get lost (it doesn't show up too well on him at a distance). Voldemort has the blue one, as he's more likely to land himself in trouble, being much keener on going out than Sev is. The ID tags I ordered turned out to be huge, waaaay too big, so I've had to re-order smaller ones of those too. Sigh. Collar piccies not very good as they were - surprise - completely potty at the time and not staying still for more than a couple of seconds at a time.
Anyway, we hope to stick to our original plan, which was to not let the babies go out until mid January. If they keep being this manic, though, we may have to let them out once they recovered from the vet visit next week. Eeek. They're still so tiny. These collars are kitten size, but even on the very tiniest size adjustment they're still a little bit loose :-/
Next week's shaping up to be a bit manic, with swimming, yoga, tai chi, karate and cinema trip and extra writing deadlines to fit in, plus we're visiting friends, taking Grandad to the hospital, taking the kittens to the vets to be neutered and needing to go shopping to buy the grown ups in the family some pressies. Have finished shopping for Emily's Christmas and birthday, which is unusual for this time of year!
Finally, some pictures of Romeo and JuJu - both of whom have been playing it cool all day, pretending that they *never* *ever* went manic over Christmas trees....although JuJu was certainly having a sneaky sniff when she thought nobody was looking ;-)
4 comments:
just spent far too long staring at the pic of juliet wondering what she was lying on, is she trying to get into a hat?!
LOL :-) That's Romeo at the bottom (named them the wrong way round in the text above the photos), but yes, he is trying to sleep in Emily's baseball cap! He tries to sleep in slippers, too. Managed it when he was a kitten, but he's a BIG boy now! Unless you did mean Juliet, the top picture - she's lying on some random fur material she's taken a liking too. :-)
I thought that one was Romeo but got confuzzled!
fab trees - so many :) I so agree with the natural way home ed kids get to grow up... I think it's essential to have thoroughly done and enjoyed childhood to go on and actually become a mature adult. Lovely to see :)
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