Glitter, Christmas and a First of Thousands

I love glitter, don't get me wrong. All things sparkly and all that.
The thing I am learning about glitter though, is that a) it is a nursery school staple (especially at Christmas time), and b) it gets into everything and is extremely hard to eradicate.

These, now in my mind, insidious little pieces of plastic (Is that what glitter is? Plastic?) seem to be in every corner and crevasse of our home. All over our floor, in the buggy, in the toilet, in our food, in the school back pack, in my handbag, in the wash basket, in J's hair, in O's nappy, and even in our bed. Everywhere I look a little piece of glitter is twinkling at me. I have decided to embrace this trend and will be adorning all our Christmas cards with mountains of the stuff.
And yes, Christmas is coming. However, is it just me or is it a loooong time in coming? I think Christmas (and the promise of all things wonderful for well behaved little girls) began in our home in about mid-November. Big mistake.

In a toddlers' mind time has little meaning and every day J thinks Christmas is here.... and this is not aided by the endless stream of Christmas activities thrown at our children these days.

J started painting a Christmas tree and learning Christmas songs at nursery school in October. Now I understand that the teachers have only so much time to cram Christmas into them before school ends (in our case this week), but October????
Then there is;
- the nativity play
- Christmas decorations in the shops (suddenly I am noticing just how many Father Christmas's there are everywhere, as J is kindly pointing them out to me)
- putting up the Christmas tree
- opening a Christmas chocolate every morning (i.e. advent calendar; top tip - great bribe material!)
- lighting Christmas candles
- a new outfit kindly sent to us "for Christmas day" courtesy of Stella (McCartney; from her GAP range. If only Mommy had been so lucky!)
- meeting Father Christmas (huge excitement, wide eyes and a loooong list for him to fulfill)
- writing a letter to Father Christmas, just in case he did not get everything down when we met him. (Another top tip - when you post your letter to Father Christmas, do not address it to your own address, as I did as wanted to keep it for J & O's "memory boxes". Said letter arrived back at our home three days after being posted by J and she picked it up off the doormat and recognised it.... took some sharp Mommy tap dancing to get out of that one.)
- Christmas parties, for which "a gift to the value of five pounds must be supplied clearly labelled with your child's name" (J is attending triple the amount that I am. i.e. She is attending three, I am attending... well, none.)
And so it goes on.

And yet, as much as J is loving all this Christmas activity, Christmas will not have arrived until Father Christmas delivers a Baby Moddy (Who knows where she got the name from. Who am I to question?). Baby Moddy must come complete with a purple dummy, a bib, pink dungarees with a sheep on it and a pink hat with nothing on it. At least she knows what she wants. God help us when she is a teenager.

J attended Christmas school today. Run at her nursery school for mothers like me who don't know what to do with their children all day every day, it was held from 9am to 3pm. I was dubious about how well she would handle the day as she only usually attends between 9am to 12noon, it was with different teachers and different children from her usual class and of course she has been so unwell. But I needed her out the house today as O is still very sick and I was desperate to avoid "The Day From Hell" we had yesterday. So I made her packed lunch this morning and sent her off.

(Reader alert - if a seasoned mother, the following may come across as a bit trite.)
I realised that this was actually a BIG moment. Her first packed lunch of thousands. I reflected on how fast the time has gone, and that too soon I will be sending her into the world every day with a packed lunch and then the time will come when she doesn't even want the packed lunch!

O and I had the most delicious day. So so quiet, calm and peaceful. Given he is still not well and all he wanted to do was sleep, he and I had a sleep together this morning (a first) and then I watched some rubbish tv while he dozed on my lap this afternoon (not something I typically indulge in, but what's a girl to do when her beautiful baby boy just wants to cuddle and snooze with his Mommy?!). I ignored housework, To Do lists and just about everyhting. It was bliss.

The weird thing was though ..... I kindof missed J.