We had five Christmas celebrations. The first one was the Sunday before Christmas with my parents and younger sister. The second was Christmas Eve with Joe’s parents. The third was the day after Christmas with my Grandma and older sister. The fourth was with my dad’s family on the Saturday after Christmas. The fifth was Grace’s big day, when Santa’s gifts arrived, the Sunday after Christmas.

I know, Dear Reader. The Feels like Home family really loves Christmas. I could post one Christmas picture a week from now until Christmas 2010. I’m not kidding.

At first, Grace didn’t get the present thing. She stuffed her wrapped gifts into her purse, and then she got mad when we tried to get her to open them. It took some time to convince her to rip the pretty paper off.

By second or third set of presents, though, she knew what to do. She opened all of her presents and some of the other guests’ presents, and she laughed and squealed with excitement.

By the end of the week, Grace looked at us with wide eyes, as if to say “No more presents. Please. I just can’t handle it.” We missed the look, though, and gave her another thirty-seven couple of gifts to open.

She was a trooper. She opened plastic food and felt food and Elmo books and chocolate candies and Magna Doodles and DVDs and a whole lot of other stuff.

And then, she collapsed. She fell over like an ancient redwood, right onto my sister’s lap. She paused a moment, and then crawled over to me. Her eyes were closed before her head hit my belly. Is this a tired baby or what?

I hoisted her up onto my shoulder, covered her with a blanket, and kissed her on the top of her head. My sister snapped the first picture just then.

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