Olivia understood Christmas a lot better this year (obviously). Unfortunately Richard had to work and so had left the house long before Olivia woke up. She opened her stocking up but we left the rest of the presents until after he'd got back late on in the afternoon. We've decided (a little controversially) not to do the Father Christmas thing that most people do. To be honest we just couldn't bring ourselves to lie to her. Instead we've encouraged her to focus on the fact that Christmas is when we celebrate Jesus' birthday (we had a birthday cake and candles to do this and sang 'Happy Birthday' too) and said that Father Christmas' real name is St Nicholas, that he was a real person who loved Jesus and gave presents to children and poor people and that we can remember him at Christmas too by having a stocking full of presents. It was (for me at least) a difficult decision to make but once we'd done it we felt a lot happier about taking this line.
Olivia wore her new party dress to church which her Aunty Kate had given her. We arrived our usual 12 mins after the service had started and Olivia announced very proudly that she'd had a new dress. She then proceeded to do a number of laps of honour around the room - very funny! After church Olivia and I went to Kate and Alun's for Christmas Day lunch.
Once Richard got back from work we showed Olivia her big present from us - her new bedroom. Up until 10 days or so before Christmas it had been our room so a quick turnaround had been necessary. We've moved into what was the office and we got handy-Andy to wallop some magnolia and white around Olivia's new room. She got a racing-car bed for Christmas (great Ebay purchase!) which she'd spotted in the Argos catalogue and we fished Richard's old rocking horse out of the roof. All her toys are now in her room (Hooray!) which means that the living-room is toy-free once more - at least until the bump turns up. She was clearly delighted with her new present:
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