... and I kinda liked it.
It's strange to be really doing the whole Christmas thing, but I found I couldn't resist - I really wanted to get her a mound of treats for she is such a good little girl.
We read so much she needed books and pjs and things like that and that was a lot of the gifts, but it was wonderful to see her ripping open the multicoloured packages and see her mouth literally drop when she saw some of the things. I really see how you don't know giving til you give to your child. I felt unabashed joy at watching her get so many treats, to delight her as much as she delights us.
I read something the other night in one of my insomniac plagues (I've been up since 1:20 this morning already - bah!) in The Atlantic, an article about the chemical nature of happiness and the brain etc., and one of the passages really disturbed me and I've been thinking of it for days. In its arguement about the mysterious nature of happiness the author showed that studies have shown that while people say that having children brings them their greatest joys, when you test people during parenting they most often respond as 'unhappy'. His assertion is that children don't really make us happy at all, and I cannot imagine that to be true. I know that this is the 'easy' time, when she doesn't talk back, is little trouble, not yet a mind of her own. I know there will be challenges ahead that will make me respond as 'unhappy'. But to fathom that this person will at any point not give me the greatest joy I have ever known, the most pride and the greatest sense of family I have ever had is near impossible for me. Today we gave Nahanni some gifts, but she is literally my gift everyday. If I learned nothing else in 'Statistics and Methodolgy' I did learn that you shouldn't believe every study. I live its opposing theory every day.
Happy Holidays.
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