Christmas

Before we commence with the regular old blog post, lets take a moment of silence to mourn what I just lost. I am so bummed that something happened and all the videos and all the pictures I got of Christmas Eve and Christmas morning are just gone. I'll never get them back. I can still see some of them exactly how they were laid out in my mind.

Now, let's talk Christmas. I'll do my best to paint the picture with words. It really was the most perfect of Christmases and one to be remembered.

Christmas this year was just perfect and blissful. On Christmas Eve we went to La Sagesse beach with a bunch of friends in the morning and spent some much loved time in the sun. We brought our little puppy, Scout, along and she had so much fun chasing the little kids around and wrestling with the resort owners' dog, and in true island dog fashion shivered and shivered once she got water on her. We let her curl up under a towel and try to shake the cold away. Bennett mainly played in the sand but Adam and I took turns boogie boarding the huge waves. A moment of panic came upon me when I was caught in one of the waves and found myself tumbling under the water, my left shoulder scraping against the sand and my nose filling up with water. But really, it was no big deal, I was mainly being a wimp and freaking out over nothing.
At the end of our day at the beach, Adam was holding Bennett while I took Scout for a walk. When I returned I found him falling asleep under a towel against Adam's chest, eyes drooping slowly to a close. I guess as I was away, there was a little conversation that went like this:

B: Nap?
A: Are you tired?
B: Yeah.
A: Do you want to take a nap?
B: Yeah.

Bennett then curled up on his daddy's chest and fell asleep. He stayed asleep when we put him in his car seat, for the whole 45 minute drive home, and then continued to sleep when I took him inside and set him on his bed. My heart was so happy to see those two like that. I feel I get to experience those moments daily, but with Adam in school he misses out on a lot of them. To see the two bonding and to think that Adam got to experience the kind of moment that keeps me breathing was so spellbinding. It was just the perfect beginning to the most perfect of Christmases.

When Bennett woke up we made arroz con pollo, a Costa Rican traditional dish and one of Adam's favorite traditions from growing up where they would eat it every Christmas Eve. It was quite delicious and not too far off from his mom's, it made us both very homesick. Then, while Adam worked on the Christmas donuts he insisted on making, I built a fort over one of the mattresses we pulled from the bedroom and put in the front room. Bennett was so excited when the mattress was pulled out, and loved jumping up and down on it, but he was even more excited when he saw the sheets go up. He loved playing under them and we even had to stop him a couple of times from trying to walk over them. We turned on a Muppet Christmas Carol for our viewing pleasure and ate our tasty treats. After eating the donuts we delivered something over to a friend's house (they were watching the same movie) and visited for a few minutes.

The plan was to return home, put Bennett to bed, and then Adam and I would get up and wrap all of the presents, but instead we all fell asleep watching the remainder of a Muppet Christmas Carol in our fort. I woke up around 3:30am, realized the presents weren't wrapped and excitedly started wrapping them. Adam and I didn't get presents this year since we're doing a trip to Carriacou this next week, so it didn't take long to get them all wrapped. I was so excited for Bennett to open his presents I couldn't sleep, but luckily for me he woke up at 5, saw the Christmas tree with it's pretty lights and was ready to party. He of course went for the biggest present first, and with a rip it fell to the floor. He saw that it was an airplane and was obsessed from that moment on. I tried so hard to get him to open his other gifts, but all he wanted to do was play with that airplane. It wasn't that he didn't like the other presents, that airplane was just the coolest and he was a big fan. It was all how I wanted it. I didn't even care that he looked at the letter magnets I painstakingly made him, said "no" and wiggled in Adam's arms reaching his little hand for his airplane, I knew he would like that best and I loved that he was so happy with it. After all the presents were unwrapped, the kid was fed, I lay back down on the mattress with the biggest smile on my face, so content with life as Bennett blissfully plaid with his toys, pushing his favorite one around the floor and pushing all the buttons, I didn't even care that the annoying song was constantly playing in the background. The 3:30am wake up call hit me and I found myself drifting off to dreamland. This Christmas was one of my top 3 favorite days. It's up there with my wedding day and Bennett's day of birth, just to give you an idea of how much I loved it. It wasn't anything special, nothing too extravagant, but it was me, Adam and Bennett being a little family. I even had a moment looking through the camera lens while I filmed the opening of presents, when Scout struggled to see what was under all of the wrapping paper, Adam holding Bennett in his lap, Bennett admiring his new treasures, that it all struck me as so perfect. It's what I envisioned life would be like. It's what I hoped beyond hopes that it would be like, and I just couldn't believe my luck that I got these humans (and canine I guess) all to myself. I've been near tears just thinking about it all since.

When I woke up, Adam had already cleaned up the inevitable Christmas hurricane (okay, it was more of a tropical storm, we didn't have a lot of presents), did the mountain of dishes, and was working on laundry. A man of my heart. Then, while he took a nap I took the little nugget in only his underwear and the puppy for a walk. Really? Could this be my life? Those little cheeks drowning in the smallest underwear I could find with his pot belly hanging over the edge just made me smile. And we of course had to stop at every puddle we walked by to throw rocks in and watch the ripples fan out to the edges.

The rest of the day was spent skyping with family and revelling in the day. We ate a pot roast we bought using points we saved up at the grocery store here which made it feel so much like home and enjoyed some Christmas root beer. Pictures or no pictures, I want to remember these two days always.