Christmas 2006 will go down in history (family history, that is) as the year Pumpkin got her head stuck in a chair. In what was a terrifying two minutes that felt like two hours, Pumpkin slipped while standing on my grandparents’ archaic folding chairs, her body sliding out the back space trapping her head between the seat cushion and the chair back. Hubby had turned away for what could only have been ten to fifteen seconds, and I was helping The Princess unwrap gifts. All of the sudden, he screamed my name. Over the chaos of twenty family members talking and opening gifts, he had to yell to be heard. I stood up, saw what happened, and in one of those weird slow-mo kind of moments, climbed over the back of the couch to get to them.
It was awful. Pumpkin was screaming. Hubby, never great under pressure (flashbacks to The Princess’s febrile seizure came to mind), was shaken, and struggling to figure out how to get her unstuck. Not sure how Pumpkin got into the mess, I wasn’t sure how to get her out. My uncle (who is usually kind of a jerk, actually) stepped in, and literally bent the metal chair back to loosen it so we could easily slide her out. Afterwards, I held her in my arms for a minute before she begged for Hubby – and The Princess sat in my lap sobbing. She had been so afraid for her little sister.
In reality, there was nothing life threatening about the incident – she surely had room to move and breathe – it just didn’t feel that way at the time. The rest of the day was measured in terms of the incident, “Were you here when Pumpkin got stuck in the chair? Or did you get here after that?” Ho. Ho. Ho.
Other than that, today was a good day. Pumpkin was up well before the sun, and enjoyed opening the gifts in her stocking. She was particularly thrilled with a box of animal crackers, and was pretty upset that we didn’t let her eat the whole box for breakfast. The Princess was up not long after that, and was giddy that Santa remembered to bring her a Doodle Bear. She was admittedly irked that there was an outfit for Barbie in her stocking: “Uh, WHY did Santa leave me an outfit, but NO BARBIE?” (Um, because she got FOUR other Barbies from various people throughout the morning… Santa musta known that was going to happen).
Hubby, despite our agreement to not exchange gifts, bought me a cute little iPod Shuffle. I already have an MP3 player – but the arm band is breaking. These Shuffles are the cutest little clippy things. I think he partly figured if he got me a new one, he could have my current one… no worries. Little did he know – my grandparents got HIM an MP3. But I’m still peeved that he broke the agreement. Paybacks, and all. I’ll get him.
Plenty of monkey bread was consumed (It’s legendary – why have a regular ol’ cinnamon roll, when there’s monkey bread?). Giftcards aplenty litter my counter. Toys cover every inch of floor space. My over-sugared, under-rested children are finally snug in their beds where hopefully, they will sleep hard until at least 7 a.m.
Merry Christmas to all – many blessings to you and your families on this special day!
Scary moment, but good Christmas. Glad Pumpkin came through unscathed!
Have a grest rest of the year!
Wow! Kids can get in trouble fast. Glad she’s ok.
I’m glad you had such a wonderful Christmas. My DIL made monkey bread this morning, too! The kids love it!
Merry Christmas to you, too!