Merry Christmas!

We had a fantastic Christmas...except one little detail. But more on that later. The good news is that Baba, Coach, and Uncle Cameron met us in Oxford for four days of celebrating and playing. Not having to travel was a wonderful Christmas gift in and of itself. The holiday had a couple of crazy moments (in the charming way family holidays always do). For example, when we arrived late on the 22nd to pick our tree, no one was working and we had to slip the payment under the door, then load the humongous tree (the little ones were gone) onto my dad's car with no rope, trimmers, etc. Somehow Billy and my dad held it in place through the sunroof before squeezing it into our tiny apartment. Cam ended up driving about 35 hours from Montana only to turn around 48 hours later and do it all over again and Charlie was high on codeine for the second half of their visit (again, more on this soon). But despite these little things, I'd say the holiday was a success. Charlie was in heaven playing with his Baba, Coach, and Uncle Cameron and Billy and I loved having time with them, too.

On to the one unfortunate event I mentioned... On Christmas Eve day, we had just arrived at my parents' cabin when Charlie touched the gas fireplace and burned his hand. When his hand went from red to waxy-looking, and his cries turned panicky, Billy and I loaded him up and headed to the doctor (thank goodness the office was open on Christmas Eve!) By the time we got there, Charlie was hysterical and I was starting to become really upset myself. His hand had erupted in blisters and he was trying to shake them off and begging us to help him. We learned he had a 2nd degree burn and needed to have his hand washed, medicated, and wrapped twice each day. The whole process has been heartbreaking at times, but Charlie has been a champ. Once the washing part (his least favorite is done) he begs us to "put the yucky hand away" and wrap it back up. When the whole ordeal is done, he hugs and says, "All done! Thank you, mommy. Thank you daddy" and I kind of feel like crying with guilt.

We've had some funny moments with the codeine (for example, the first night while he was lying exhausted next to Billy in bed, Charlie looked curiously at his bundled paw, then said "hi, Mr. Sheep". Mac also told us he spent a while talking to the neighbor's bushes while they were playing outside over the weekend.)

The bad news is that the blisters have become really large and we have to see a plastic surgeon at the childrens' hospital tomorrow morning. We'll let you all know how it goes. We're hoping he doesn't have nerve damage or severe scarring.

I hope your holidays were equally as fun as (but hopefully less accident-prone than) ours. Have safe and fun New Years!