Merry Christmas everyone!
I realize those sentiments may be slightly early. However, I
also realize it's the last Friday before Christmas meaning that I won't have
another shot to wish all eight of my readers an awesome holiday!
Of course, everyone knows that a lot of things go into the
Christmas season. After all, there's the multitude of family gatherings. The
ever-popular Christmas parties with friends. Gingerbread house building
competitions. By the way, consider this a reminder that Bethany and I are
undefeated as a duo when it comes to gingerbread house building competitions.
Of course, one thing that defines the Christmas season for many is the gift
giving.
As I've been laid up for the past few weeks, I've really
just started to "reclaim my life" this week. It goes without saying
that many a thing I normally take care of fell by the wayside during that time
period. Dishes went unwashed. Dinners weren't prepped. The bed wasn't made.
Laundry wasn't washed. I'm sorry to say my poor pregnant wife was saddled with
quite a few of those responsibilities. It's ok, I'm taking care of them now.
However, there was one last thing that had gone undone that
I really needed to take care and that was last-minute Christmas shopping. Now,
most of our shopping was done online on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. However,
there were a few remaining items that I knew could be taken care of later. This
week, 'later' finally arrived so with Ellie in tow, I set out on a little
adventure to do the last of our shopping.
One thing I've learned over the past couple of weeks is that
taking Ellie out of the house by myself is a much more difficult proposition
than it used to be. For starters, I can't actually put Ellie in her car seat.
Instead, I'm totally reliant upon her willingness to get in and out of it by
herself. It's actually quite the process. First, she'll pull herself up into
the car before hopping onto the back seat. Then, she'll climb into her car seat
and turn around before finally plopping down and allowing me to buckle her in.
Once that process ended, we set out for our destination,
Academy Sports in Liberty. Our quest? To procure a nice, warm stocking hat. Now,
an added struggle for me right now is that I can't simply put Ellie in a
shopping cart because that would necessitate lifting her. Instead, she has to
walk alongside me wherever I go. If you've ever had a toddler, you realize how
difficult that proposition is.
For one, Ellie's attention span is only for about 30 seconds
at a time. On this occasion, she definitely insisted on touching anything and
everything at her height and in her line of vision until she saw something that
drew all of her attention. The object of her desire? An inflatable rocking
couch.
At first, all Ellie wanted to do was simply touch the couch
and watch it rock, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Soon enough
though, the desire to sit upon it overcame her prompting Ellie to clamber up
unto the seat. While that was all well and good, it was only a few more minutes
until she saw the second seat was also desirable for sitting. Even though I
told her both seats were exactly the same, Ellie needed to be sure. To that
point, she hopped down off the couch, scampered to the other side, and hopped
up on it to test her hypothesis.
At this point, after realizing both seats were the same, she
realized the importance in having a friend share in the experience with her.
With no one else around, she turned to me and implored me to take a seat beside
her. I did exactly that and there we sat
in the middle of Academy Sports, rocking back and forth on an inflatable couch
to the enjoyment/consternation of other shoppers as they passed by.
After a while, Ellie's enthusiasm for the couch mercifully
faded and we took leave of Academy, heading on to our next destination to
complete our Christmas shopping list.
Here's where I wrap up this little post with a reminder for
you. As you celebrate this Christmas season, be sure to remember that it's not
about the presents or the snacks or the 24-hour viewing of 'A Christmas Story'
on TBS. It's not even about the family gatherings. Nope.
Christmas exists for us to celebrate the day Jesus Christ
came into this world. The reason that is still worth celebrating 2000 years
after the fact is because He would go on to hang on a cross for the sins of the
entire human race, allowing us to have eternal life with the father through the
simple acceptance of that sacrifice.
If you're reading this, do me a favor and spend some time
thinking about that over the next few days. Also, if you haven't trusted in
Christ, there's no better time to start than now.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good read! #DaddyWrite
No comments:
Post a Comment