Ahhhh, the ravages of the day after Christmas...

Yesterday went fairly well, all told. I awoke at 8 am, to three children still sleeping. The night before, we had ¾ Pint, both of whose parents worked. ½ Pint was totally scandalized by this fact, she thought that her cousin's parents should get Christmas Eve off. I asked her if she thought people should stop being sick and all the bad guys should quit being bad?

She said well, no. So I told her that Nursey still had to take care of sick people that are in hospital, and Cop still had to track down the bad guys so they had to work...

I took the kids to Christmas Eve Mass. We have three churches that are served by our Priest. That becomes extremely convenient at times like Christmas Eve. We had three masses, 6:30 at one church about a 10 minute drive, 9:30 at our usual church (3 minute drive) and midnight at the other church (7 minutes).

Guess which one I chose? Yep. The 6:30. They should have called it the “people who have small children” mass. Cause that's who was there. Everyone in the Parish who had small kids showed up at the 6:30 Mass, along with the elderly who don't want to stay up late.

We got everyone dressed in their little Christmas Eve dressed, found enough tights and pantyhose and socks to fit everyone, I went in and found an outfit I hadn't worn for about a year, but is a red pantsuit and suitable, found black dress pumps...and we were off.

Got to the church, no one was there yet. Ran the other mile into town (drove) and the Dollar Store was still open. Locked the kids in the car right in front of the door, ran in to buy D batteries for Pint's robot.

Back to the car, and back to the church. Now there are lights on. Into the church.

IT'S FREEZING IN THERE.

Thats what happens when you have this big old church which doesn't get used every day by anyone. It takes a good bit to warm it up even with the furnace on.

Slip into a pew. Pint has to go potty. The bathrooms are in the church hall, outside, behind the church. There is NO WAY I am going out there. It is COLD.

Tell her she will just have to hold it, and there is a reason I tell them all to go potty before we leave the house.

The church is very beautiful. The nativity is particularly pretty. Which becomes funny later.

We keep our coats on, as does everyone else who comes in. We see a few friends and speak softly to them.

We make our prayers and seat ourselves. The Priest comes in, and the procession starts. We are still freezing. ½ Pint and ¾ Pint are being sort of disruptive, in a nice 5 and 6 yr old way. Pint is paying attention to the service. They aren't, only when it is time to stand, and they are doing their responses, but you can tell their little hearts aren't in the responses. They are too busy thinking about Christmas and the presents under the tree.

I tell them, if you are good, you can open a toy. If you are bad during Mass, it's pajama's for you kiddo. I have to have SOME control!!

Christmas is a Holy Day of Obligation in the Catholic Church. I had to take Pint to make her confession this past week. She had never made her confession to this Priest, only to our old Priest. And her previous confessions were face to face, in the new manner. This one was in a confessional like I had to do when I was a kid.

She said Father laughed out loud once while she was in there.....She told him it had been 9 months since her last confession and she had too many sins to remember them all. He laughed and told her to just tell him the worst ones then.

It's nice to have a Priest with a sense of humor.

We came home, did the hot chocolate thingy, did the present thingy, did the Night before Christmas thingy, and then did the bed thingy. Pappy left with ¾ Pint to take her home and put her to bed.

Baby was here for Christmas. Her and I finished wrapping. The kids went to bed without too much problems, I only had to spend about ½ hour standing on the ladder in Pint's room. She can be particularly difficult during times of stress. Christmas Eve wasn't too bad.

We got everything wrapped and then DH came home and we stuffed the stockings which were hung on the mantle with care.....

And went to bed.

Back to the beginning of the blog. I woke Baby up, went into the Dining room and turned on the stereo LOUD. Christmas music. Out of the bedroom came the kidlets, smiles and hugs all around. Into the living room they flew, straight to the stockings.

Started opening presents after I got my coffee. Calamity was due to come over. I was not looking forward to that, but it was okay.

The day progressed. Calamity got here with ¼ Pint who has been sick for over a week, and although I have told her five times during the past week to take the baby to the dr, or at least to the ER, she hasn't done that yet.

Son and Niece/daughterinlaw came over. They and Baby all left at 11:30 for other family visits that had to be made.

Nursey and ¾ Pint got here about 1 ish. Nursey brought the fixings for Christmas Dinner. Calamity left shortly after.

Pint was acting a little weird. Very withdrawn. It is because Calamity was (according to her) very tired and hadn't gotten much sleep. So, she kept nodding off in the middle of conversations and whenever she was sitting in one place for more than 60 seconds.

For those of you who are not familiar with certain aspects of this behavior, falling asleep in the middle of a conversation or whenever you sit down is an aspect of heroin addiction. One that unfortunately, Pint is most familiar with. And so, she was again, watching her mother have behaviors that are reminiscent of her using heroin. Is she? We don't know. But the behavior definitely affected Pint.

Calamity left, to take the baby other places, and not probably to the ER where the poor thing needed to be.

We had dinner and a wonderful time with Nursey and ¾ Pint. The kids didn't start fighting until it was time for Nursey to leave anyway, and then it was time for bed.

It took me two hours to put Pint to sleep. I stood on the ladder. I stood on one leg with the other leg thrown up onto the top bunk, my arm under her pillow, my other are wrapped around her little 8 year old body to give comfort. I stroked her head. I kissed her neck. Finally, she fell asleep.

Today, she will have normalcy or whatever approaches normalcy in our home. It's a mess. The house needs swept, the dishes are still not all the way done from yesterday. The presents are piled up in the bedrooms.

I will get to it all. Slowly. Dh went into town to the bank (½ hour away) and then to Nursey's to drop off a forgotten present, then will stop at the Dollar Store on the way back to get more batteries.

Monster, who is even HUGER than he used to be (we are estimating roughly 185 pounds now) got scared of something this morning and wouldn't get off the bed. It was too funny.

And, my coffee pot breathed it's last, so DH is also getting a cheapo coffee pot at the Dollar Store. A good coffee pot can wait til DH's pension check hits the bank on Monday.

We survived another Christmas.

The Pope just announced that the official Nativity did NOT happen in a stable.  I am thinking that no one is going to change their idea of the Nativity that we have all grown up on. 

½ Pint got me the best present I have ever gotten. It is a little tiny plaque, from the school Santa's workshop. It says...

Grandma's are Mommies with lots of practice.