White Christmas 2004

As incredible as this may seem, Houston got something of a white Christmas this year. Sure, now that it's Christmas morning, most of the snow is already gone, but for a little while there, after midnight rolled around, it was truly snowing on Christmas.


I took Zoey outside to let her play in the snow, and she loved it. One would think a not-quite-two-year-old wouldn't really understand what was going on, but perhaps enjoying a snowfall is an innate thing that even the young can participate in. Maybe she was just feeding off my excitement. Who knows. In any case, bundled up in her heavy jacket (which she is finally getting a little use out of), she ran around in circles in the driveway yelling "Now! Now!" You have to keep in mind that words that start with two consonants are difficult for her tiny mouth, so "snow" becomes "now," much like "spoon" is "poon." It's hard to not adopt her idiosyncrasies sometimes, because they're really cute. But the books say not to.

Now I feel a little guilty, because she was coming down with the sniffles last night, which later turned into a really difficult and sleepless night for both of us. She can't breath, and I think her throat was sore from all the drainage because she woke up crying just about every hour. Not the whimpering kind of crying either, she was wailing and screaming. We'll have to see how she feels this morning, because we've yet to do Christmas as our families houses, and we've got two to go to. Not sure she's going to be able to deal. In the picture above, she's only wearing a sweater, but I want you to know that she wasn't outside at this time for very long. We did go out again a little later, but I put on her heavy jacket. I promise. I did not get my child sick. Besides, you don't get sick from bad weather. That's a myth and an old wives tale.

We did Christmas last night, during the snow, and it was great. Zoey got lots of musical instruments. She got a kid's ukelele, which is the perfect size for her. Of course, she calls it a guitar. And she got a little drum that came with a harmonica, tambourine and marracas. She also got a cheapie keyboard from Fiesta that we're not sure will last the year. Oh well. She got much more than just the musical instruments, and she really seems to love all of her gifts, but I kid you not, she was already playing her guitar and drums by the end of the night. She'd pick up the guitar, and start singing. So far, she plays "Song in my Tummy" and "Bumblebee," two songs by Laurie Berkner, who's a children's songwriter they show on Noggin (and whose CD Zoey and Olivia both received for Christmas).

And then Trey would start playing on the drums, which made Zoey want to play the drums, so she'd put down the guitar and take the drumsticks from Trey and start playing her drum and singing "Hooray! Make way!," which is something Elmo did on a Sesame Street episode. I was actually really impressed by her memory of this, because she hasn't seen this episode in awhile.

So, while she's on the drums, Trey reaches for the guitar and starts rocking out, and for awhile there they have a little jam session going (I have some video), until Zoey realizes Daddy is playing her guitar and she decides she wants it back. She puts down the drumsticks and reaches for the guitar. This little exchange went on for some time.


And the whole time this was going on, it was snowing outside.

Hope everyone has a good Christmas. I'll update later.