{"id":1411,"date":"2009-12-30T23:31:59","date_gmt":"2009-12-31T05:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dondailey.com\/blog\/?p=1411"},"modified":"2010-02-01T00:09:54","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T06:09:54","slug":"the-most-wonderful-day-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dondailey.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/30\/the-most-wonderful-day-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Most Wonderful Day Of The Year”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After enduring weeks of a Christmas-fueled Abby, endless viewings of RTRNR<\/a> and last-minute runs to Toys R Us, the big day finally arrived. It was the first Christmas when Abby was fully cognizant of the implications of the season. I got all my picture-taking junk set up the night before (I used the Strobist Christmas game plan<\/a>) in anticipation of capturing the surprise and wonder on Abby’s face when she saw Santa’s bounty laid before her. But instead of letting her awaken to her own circadian rhythm, we woke her up, which resulted in her being groggy, confused and in a kinda cranky mood. She did show a little classic Christmas emotion when her jaw dropped upon seeing the half-eaten cookies and empty milk glass left from Santa’s late-night snack.<\/p>\n

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After she recovered her composure she fell to opening presents as if she had been training for an Olympic event. Once she got through one she called out “More presents,” and her assistants, Mimi and Mom, would hand her the next victim.<\/p>\n

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She likes to play with my camera, so she asked Santa to bring her a “girl camera”<\/a> and he did. Santa even took a picture of himself with it to prove he had really been there. She spent a long time photographing all her stuff. (Her Flickr account will be up and running shortly.)<\/p>\n

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Just when she thought she’d gotten through all the presents, she discovered her stocking hung with care by the chimney Gina had drawn on butcher paper in the Magic Marker\u2122 medium and taped on the wall. “I didn’t know there’d be presents in here,” she allowed.<\/p>\n

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Abby got Gina a Snuggie\u2122 and she promised me she wouldn’t tell before Christmas Day. She lasted about a day before she let it slip to her mom. Gina said Abby instantly put her head in her hands when she realized what she’d done.<\/p>\n

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The Snuggie\u2122 is not sexy.<\/p>\n

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Gina was ecstatic to receive one of those radios where you can plug in your iPod\u2122 to listen to the music over it.<\/p>\n

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The biggest hit of the day was the Baby Alive\u2122<\/a> doll. You feed it this special slimy food and chase it with some water and then mere moments later it poops and then asks to have its diaper changed. Yes, it’s as creepy as you think.<\/p>\n

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Abby also roped us all into endless games of Hungry, Hungry Hippos\u2122<\/a>. She got upset whenever there was one marble left and she couldn’t get it, so she’d just grab it and lift up her hippo’s mouth and stuff it in.<\/p>\n

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Abby’s too young to realize it, but she’s a lucky, lucky girl. Not everyone gets this kind of largesse for Christmas. We’ll work on that concept next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After enduring weeks of a Christmas-fueled Abby, endless viewings of RTRNR and last-minute runs to Toys R Us, the big day finally arrived. It was the first Christmas when Abby was fully cognizant of the implications of the season. I got all my picture-taking junk set up the night before (I used the Strobist Christmas …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,77,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abby","category-christmas","category-family-fun","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dondailey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dondailey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dondailey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dondailey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dondailey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1411"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dondailey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1437,"href":"https:\/\/dondailey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions\/1437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dondailey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dondailey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dondailey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}