Christmas Carols

Every Christmas it happens.  Or at least it has for the last few Christmases.  I sit in church and I try not to notice it.  But then we start to sing Christmas carols, which is one of my very favorite parts of the Christmas season.  I have loved singing Christmas carols my entire life and I know all the words to all the traditional carols (even if I can't carry a tune in a bucket).  I don't just know the first verse either.  Most of the them have four verses and after years in the Community Christmas Choir with Grumpa (who was then known simply as Dad) I can usually sing all four verses without glancing at a hymnal.  Sadie and I listened to the Chipmunks Christmas Carols, for the entire month of December.  

Now for my Christmas Carol rant.  The hymnals in our church are "gender inclusive."  This means that you can be happily singing Christmas Carols, enjoying the moment, and suddenly you realize that you have sung "and peace to men on earth" while everyone else has sung "and peace to all on earth."  It doesn't help me to look at the book.  These words are engraved on my brain and just come out this way.  Apparently, in the name of being Politically Correct, they had to change "men" to "all" because some overly sensitive women somewhere couldn't understand that when they said "peace to men on earth" they really did mean everyone (I think those of us who aren't looking for a fight may have realized that when we were three or four years old).  Anyways, it's not just one song (you don't realize how many songs have "man" "men" or "mankind" in them until they start changing the words to "all "us" and "all of us").  Now that I've gotten that out of my system for the 2008 holiday season...

Sadie and I are both feeling 100 times better today, which is surprising considering how little sleep we got last night.  Sadie woke up at 10:55 and then again at 12:30, 2, 4, and 6.  At six I finally gave up on sleep and got out of bed to start the day.  Maybe sleep deprivation makes my temper shorter when it comes to the whole Christmas Carol thing, but maybe not, I do remember it bothering me a lot last year too (only then I just blamed it on pregnancy hormones).  After mass Paul and I had oatmeal.  I didn't realize until I was halfway through my oatmeal that Sadie was opening her mouth each time I scooped up a spoonful.  She looked like a little fish gasping for air.  I don't think she could figure out why we were eating all of her rice cereal (she seemed pretty certain that it was her cereal).  I didn't finish my oatmeal after that because she looked so sad! 

Sadie has been eating apples for five days today, so we moved on to our next new food (we've done rice cereal, sweet potatoes, peas and apples so far).  Pears!  Pears got a little bit of a puckery face, though not quite as bad as apples.  Up next is either peaches, carrots or bananas!