I reveal my best Christmas present ever.

Christmas, family

My son “Pathfinder” was born very close to Christmas one year.

I don’t seem to have a photo of him on his first Christmas. Probably because he was crying most of the time. I didn’t have the good sense to stay home with a two-week-old baby; never thought twice about making our usual two-hour trip to the grandparents’ house to spend a couple of nights. He cried much through the days of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and his great-grandmother asked me again and again, “Why is he crying?” When I finally fell into the strange bed at night, I cried myself to sleep, too. Through the fault of no one, it was my Worst Christmas in the history of family celebrations.

Just two years later this boy can be seen enjoying the holiday with my father looking on, this time at his other great-grandmother’s house, and without a tear:

How few pictures I have of him as a baby, here on the computer. There was the crying, I suppose, which he did a lot of for six months, and then the fact that his older sister Pearl was still a baby herself, so we took many pictures of the two of them, as babies and always.

As a teen Pathfinder was a cyclist. For a while we let him park his bike right by the front door, I guess because the garage had no good leaning spot…? Anyway, I’m glad we did, because it became part of Christmas Past by being caught in this picture.

I’m sure I wouldn’t have featured him in a blog post if I weren’t thinking about anniversaries in December, like St. Nicholas last week. I don’t usually write about my children because their stories are their own now. But I surely like telling you about the gift of my firstborn son.

14 thoughts on “I reveal my best Christmas present ever.”

  6. Two of our children were autumn babies and still small by Christmas and I remember the special times of holding and feeding them by the light of the tree lights. And we are any day expecting our second great-grandchild to arrive, a true Christmas baby like your son.

    I understand what you mean about their stories being their own now but there are times when I can’t resist posting about their childhood days. I loved seeing pictures of your beautiful children!

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  7. My DH will shortly celebrate his birthday and I often think of my MIL and how she coped… DH was the 5th child born within 6 years (all boys, and another would soon follow).

    How did they (and we) cope? I, at least, must have had a lot more patience not to mention energy.

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  10. My sister was born just before Christmas, just 13 months after my birth. I’m sure my mother cried a lot that year, too. What a wonderful gift a new baby is, in spite of the exhaustion.

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  11. Golly! It’s always so amazing how much children look like the adult we become. Having met the confident, handsome, godly man he had become, it’s hard to believe he was a fussy baby. I suppose he got a little extra oxygen to the brain!

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