December13th
All my life I’ve been a little obsessed with grammar, from spelling to punctuation to dangling modifiers and beyond. Just ask my sister, who has been putting up with me her whole life. I never missed a single opportunity to correct her grammar while we were growing up, or even to pre-correct her before she could make an embarrassing gaffe. Right here I had probably just warned her, “Don’t end sentences with a preposition in front of Santa. He doesn’t bring presents to dummies.”
December12th
Two years ago today we received the best Christmas present ever when our sweet baby, Eleanora, was born. She was a little angel to us, and at that point she was certainly singing through the night… although maybe not so sweetly.
December11th
Yesterday we took Eleanora for her annual meeting with You-Know-Who. They had important business to discuss, such as naughtiness versus niceness, favorite holiday songs, and Eleanora’s Christmas requests.
Since we must all look our best for these essential encounters, I put her in her Christmas dress (monogrammed by the lovely Pat Flanagan and pressed by Eleanora’s Shae-Shae), and off to the mall we went.
I was nervous. Not that she would cry. As you know, my favorite Santa photos feature a child screaming in terror. Tears wouldn’t ruin my day. What I was afraid of was that she wouldn’t sit in his lap at all, that she would squirm away. A photo of Santa with a pink blur is useless to me. So we spent the car ride discussing how super nice Santa Claus is and how much fun it is to sit in his lap.
December10th
Many years ago, Hubba Bubba bought this beautifully illustrated version of “The Night Before Christmas” to give to his nieces and nephew in Philadelphia as a Christmas present. He hoped to create a tradition of reading it to them every year.
He packed it carefully in his suitcase and boarded the plane for Philadelphia.
