Last Christmas Waiting For You

I've never spent a Christmas waiting for a child.  My first two were fall babies, so the Christmas prior I had no inkling I'd have a nearly-three-month-old the following year.  This Christmas was of course different, as has been seemingly everything during this adoption process.  We originally thought we'd have our children home well before Christmas and then we faced the depressing reality that we wouldn't meet them until 2015, for a process we began in 2013. 

Putting aside the circumstances I couldn't control, I vowed to enjoy the season with the family I have with me here now.  It felt like the busiest Christmas ever as we simultaneously stayed on track with the final stages of the adoption process and hosted our au pair's mother, so some things simply didn't get done due to not enough hours in the day.  Yet when I think about the memories from this past month, I know I made time for what was important. 

I don't know what Oliver and Soren will remember from this Christmas, perhaps very little of what exactly we did.  But I do hope they remember that it was fun.  Because that's what it was for me.  We baked gingerbread cookies with friends, learned the lyrics to our favorite carols at Dawn and Drew's annual Carols and Cocoa party, visited Santaland at Macy's (thanks Dan and Nan!) and read Christmas book after Christmas book from the collection we've accumulated over the years.  Although this Christmas will go down in our memories for being a brown Christmas, we still enjoyed winter activities like Soren's first try at downhill skiing and tubing for Oliver and me.

And then there was the usual big, boisterous Chesla Christmas Eve gathering.  Oliver and Soren had a blast playing with their cousins and opening presents and even got to stay up until (gasp!) 10:00 p.m.  It was wonderful to see my husband's family embrace Marcel and his mom on a holiday they were spending so far from home. 

Christmas Day itself was much quieter, with much-needed downtime.  After opening presents at home, we enjoyed a light lunch at Dan and Nan's and opened yet more presents.  By Christmas night we were already researching and designing plans for a custom Lego table, because yes, with a five-year-old in the house, this Christmas could be described as the "year of the Lego".  We have this crazy dream of not having our house overrun with tiny plastic bricks. 

During all of this, Kiera and Matteo were always on my mind and in my heart.  I did end up spending this Christmas without them, but I'll remember it as the last Christmas waiting for them.