The Truth about Christmas

Here's the truth about Christmas with Naomi...it is really, really, really hard.  While Jesus may be the reason for the season, there is no denying the fun of Santa and seeing the joy and delight on the faces of young children as they enthusiastically rip into their presents and love at least some of the the things Santa left under the tree for them.  Naomi hates novelty and changes in her routine.  Therefore, she hates Christmas.  She was better this year at my parents house on Christmas Eve.  She was generally composed and occassionally happy.  Last year she screamed and cried the whole time and had to be kept in a separate room away from everyone else.  The noise and commotion was too much for her.  Unfortunately, Christmas Day was just as unfun this year was it was last year.  She hates the sound of tearing paper, so opening presents (we have to open hers for her...she won't touch anything new) caused round after round of crying.  She hated every single one of her presents and cried when we showed them to her.  Because she was so upset by the whole experience, she stayed upset all morning.  Normally she is very happy and joyful in the morning.  It was kind of hard for Mommy and Daddy to enjoy the day knowing their baby was so upset and off kilter.  It was also hard for us to enjoy the day because, frankly, it gets old having miserable holidays.  We just want to be like every other family and have fun seeing our child have fun.  Every parent I know has stories about this or that present that their child hated.  I get that.  And Naomi usually eventually does learn to like everything we get for her, though sometimes it takes up to a year.  Just once, though, we would love it if she liked something right away.  So there is next year, and maybe it will be better, but maybe it will be the same or worse.  Who knows?  Fools that we are, we always hope for better and then are crushed when it isn't.  You know what else gets old?  Feeling like we have to go through life with our arms over our heads to try to protect ourselves from the next big, miserable, bomb life lobs our way.  We are hoping 2012 is going to be our year.  2009, 2010 and 2011 certainly weren't.  We are hoping we don't get crushed, again.  But who knows?  Because as difficult as things seem sometimes, we are both wise enough to know that things could get so much worse.