Happy continued holidays to all. It’s a dandy here in Indy. C. is sick, M. is teetering on the edge of a cold, I’ve got a full-blown cold, and S. is surely next. Then there are the sisters-in-law staying here, who will probably catch it before they head home. I’m going through massive amounts of kleenex and discovering the dumbed-down version of Sudafed just isn’t as good as the old, Meth-friendly kind. There were ten people in line at the pharmacy today, and I didn’t feel like waiting to get the real stuff. Good times!

Christmas was a fine day, especially for our girls. The big gift from the parents was a big dollhouse the two girls will eventually share. M. has been playing with it almost constantly and C., well, C. likes to roll up against it and slap it with her hands. We also deposited a large load of Play-Dough products on M., and she’s been enjoying that while driving us crazy as she carries it all over and we worry about it getting ground into the carpet. After early Christmas at our place, we headed to the in-laws, where our generation did our gift exchange and the girls got a few more presents. M. got a sit-and-spin, which these days play music and talk to you, along with a Leap Frog learning desk that is something she can grow into. Right now, all these gifts and a few others are spread around our living room, and when she’s awake, she goes from gift-to-gift like, well, like a kid the day after Christmas. Once things calm down a little, well disperse them through the house so that she can spend some quality time with them instead of bouncing from toy to toy. It is telling, though, that now as soon as we head to bed at night, when we talk about what she did that day, the first thing she says is “I played with toys!” She was a lot of fun, although a little hyper, on Christmas day. It was cool to see her getting into it, although full comprehension is still a couple years away from what other friends tell us. She got many talkings to at Christmas Eve Mass, when she refused to keep her voice down. But she wasn’t out-of-control by any means. C.’s reaction, obviously, was a little more muted. It’s safe to say she had no idea what was going on and thinks nothing of all the new toys she now has to play with. She was so cranky today that I don’t think it would matter if she understood or not.

Again, I hope all of you had Merry Christmases and the rest of your holidays go well.