Elise Navidad

The turkey had barely gotten cold from Thanksgiving before all of the excitement in the Molloy household shifted over to Christmas. Mind you, Marty and I are not overzealous Christmas people. We do not listen to Christmas carols for months or go shopping on Black Friday or decorate the house to the nines. We listen to Christmas music on the day we put up the tree, Christmas Eve and Christmas only, and do our shopping a few days before Christmas and complain when the stores have any sort of reference to Christmas before the month of December, and put up a tree and a wreath and call the house decorated. But this year, Elise was jazzed with the Christmas spirit very early and it seemed to be infectious for the whole family!

On Saturday we took a trip to the aquarium and to our surprise the place was completely Christmas-ified. There were Christmas trees and packages and reindeer and wreaths decorating the whole aquarium - not in the tanks of course - but there was a special appearance by "Scuba Santa" and his "scuba elf" in one the the large tanks. Perhaps a scuba diving Santa Claus sounds bizarre - and it was - but the kids thought it was spectacular. Then there was also an appearance by (dry land?) Santa. Elise actually ran up to him, climbed into his lap and told him what she wanted for Christmas without a thought. This is particularly odd because, if you remember, Elise was absolutely terrified of Santa last year and was shaking in her boots at the thought of being in the same room as Santa, never mind sitting on his lap. But she appears to have gotten over that whole breaking and entering Santa is scary situation.

Later, she excitedly told us that she was guaranteed to get the toy she asked for from Santa (walk and giggle doll) because he was the real Santa and "there is only one Santa. I can tell." (perhaps a reference to he fact that she doesn't think Scuba Santa was the real Santa?) When Marty asked her why she didn't ask for a Pillow Pet (the gift that she has been absolutely hounding us about for the last three months) she said "because we can just get it at BJ's." Perhaps she is a little too cleaver for her own good.

Anyway, Sunday morning Elise was full of Christmas spirit so much that she nagged us into going ahead and putting the tree up. This is unheard of for us - as it was still NOVEMBER - but she really, really, really, really wanted to put the tree up and three hours of constant begging finally wore us down. When Marty finished putting our tree up and got the lights situated, she said "when do we put the condiments on?" (we then proceeded to let her call them "condiments" instead of ornaments for about 20 minutes before correcting her because it was so cute). She was absolutely full of adorableness that morning - while we were decorating the tree listening to Christmas music, the song Feliz Navidad came on and she said "This is my song! They are almost saying my name! Elise Navidad!" Apparently Lucas felt left out so he started saying "My song! Lucas Navidad!" which just added to the adorableness of it all.

The Christmas spirit was fleeting though, because on Wednesday, Elise came home from school completely distressed that we weren't planning to celebrate Hanukkah. Turns out that her best buds at school this year (Audrey and Anna Mercedes) happen to both be Jewish and she was feeling a little left out. I promised her that we could put up some Hanukkah decorations if she really wanted to and we could talk to Audrey's family about how they celebrate Hanukkah so we could learn more about it. When Marty dropped Elise off at school on Friday, the teacher asked Marty if we were Jewish, because apparently Elise was telling everyone at school that we celebrate Hanukkah.

But by Friday night, the Christmas love was back in full swing. We went to a Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony/Christmas Carol singing session at the Seminary across the street from our house with Audrey and her mom. It was very cold, but the kids enjoyed listening to the songs and then were asked if they wanted to lead the group in a familiar tune. So the girls actually stood in front of a microphone and sang Jingle Bells (Elise! Singing in front of 50 people!). She actually thought it was pretty great and did an excellent job remembering the words. We were so proud of our littler performer!

Afterward, we took all the kids to the local florist to visit with Santa (Santa is popping up in the strangest places...). Lucas sat on Santa's lap first - and was shy for a minute but then asked for "a truck" and smiled and chatted with Santa for a bit about trucks. Then Elise and Audrey went and sat with Santa together and had an adorable yet semi-irrelevant conversation about how eating egg on top of pizza for breakfast is delicious (according to Santa who learned that from children in Italy) before getting to their gift requests.

Christmas overload continued on Saturday when we all headed downtown to Macy's to watch the Christmas light show and visit the Charles Dickens Christmas Village. There was a lot of waiting around, standing in lines and patience required for these activities and while the adults were not exactly feeling the Christmas spirit by the end of it, the kids had a great time (and were very good, all things considered) and were already asking if we could do it all again next year.

Elise Navidad!