Margaret’s First Christmas

This is Margaret getting into the Christmas spirit! She’s all anxious because it’s already December and she’s behind on her Christmas shopping.

I would enjoy the idea of sending out a Christmas/Holiday card if I hadn’t already made and sent out baby announcements. Maybe if Christmas weren’t so close to her birthday I’d have been able to do both. I need a little more time. Maybe I’ll send out Valentines, but don’t hold your breath. Maybe I’ll just make cupcakes and color the frosting pink. Maybe I won’t do any of these things.

Margaret will be flying to New Jersey to meet the rest of the family: all of her aunts, uncles and cousins on John’s side of the family, not to mention the fact that she gets to meet her other grandmother! Big excitement!!

I am very much looking forward to seeing our friends and family in New Jersey but I am also looking forward to the cold weather. I know most people would prefer to be in warm weather but I just don’t like heat. I’ve said for years: when it’s hot you can only remove so much clothing and then you are down to skin whereas when it is cold you can always layer up. The other day it was 38 degrees in Sydney and although it wasn’t humid there was a hot wind that felt like a furnace door opening. 38 degrees is 100 degrees Fahrenheit!!

The other bad element to the hot weather here in Sydney is the flies. They are persistent and they are everywhere. Just the other day I found out why they seem determined to go up the nose and in the eyes. Apparently they get desperate for water and will detect the moisture. Yuck! I find I’m imagining them spreading germs wherever they land. There is a joke that the Australian salute is a hand waving away flies.

You get a sense of how helpless the baby is when she is bothered by the flies and cannot brush the flies away or doesn’t know that she can. She has developed a lot in the last few weeks, learning that she can reach out and grab things that she sees. She also smiles back at you and that is a lot of fun. She has a beautiful, toothless smile. Another game she will play is to stick her tongue out at you when you stick your tongue out at her. I’ve been trying to teach her “SOOOO big” but I think it’s early for that. “SOOOO big” is when you ask, “How big is Margaret?” and lift her hands over her head and say “SOOOO big.”

Back to December 2004

Last revised: December 2004