Christmas 2010 - A Success

As rough as December was on Annie (and me) I have to say that this was one of the best Christmas's EVER! I'm not sure why, maybe it's because the couple days of leading up to Christmas Annie started feeling better and we saw some easier days or maybe it's because we have been dealing with rett for so long that we are starting to (dare I say the words) get used to it?? Who knows, but at any rate we had a great time!

Annie's GI pain eased up a little bit over the Christmas weekend but she was still off and on at my moms big Christmas Eve party. What's weird is that it didn't really upset me too much. I think it's because I just let go and decided that instead of holding her and trying every trick in the book to make her happy only to fail and get us both frustrated I just passed her on to Scott, who passed her on to my sister, who passed her on to her husband. I got a chance to chat with the rest of the family and I think Annie was much happier being around everyone rather than just staring at my stressed face.

Chirstmas morning Annie was the first one up but quickly fell back to sleep after snuggling with mom and dad. Gracie was next and shockingly James was last. We headed downstairs at which time Annie became irritated. Instead of forcing the issue and making her do hand over hand to open her gifts we just wrapped her in a down comforter and let her relax. When she was ready we had her look inside her gift bags. We used 2 huge gift bags and put all of her gifts in there together so she didn't have to deal with wrapping paper and using her frustrating hands. We had breakfast and then took her down into the play room to see her big gift. We set up a canopy with Christmas lights (she loves lights), a flying angel and big comfy pillow - "Annie's special place". She layed on her pillow to look up at the lights and fell right to sleep - she loved it!

Christmas Day we headed over to my in-law's house. Annie was not overly thrilled but seemed comfortable for the most part. (I LOVE this picture of her beautiful face. I really need to get some solid color arm braces though, sometimes they can be a bit "busy" - red would have been nice against the black dress - oh well, maybe we won't need them at all next year!).

Christmas 2010 was a success. Leading up to it, not so much, but we were blessed to be around lots of family. There are so many things that we have to be thankful for and sometimes I loose sight of that when the stress gets to be too much. I'm not sure if the New Year will bring less stress but I am hoping that I can use this December as a way of learning to cope with it better.

This post was mostly about Annie but we have 2 other kiddos here that thoroughly enjoyed Christmas! Here they are jumping up and down on Christmas morning!

Gracie eating a "Happy Birthday Jesus" cupcake

Grammy got Gracie a puzzle, she loved it so much she put it together and then hugged it! Silly girl!

James didn't even sit down to open his gifts!