Gifts, gifts, gifts.

[rivka]

This may be the earliest I've ever been done with my Christmas shopping.

Alex's nanny came for a few hours yesterday so that Michael and I could go shopping together. We got presents for my two RAs, my sister Judy, Michael's father, Michael's stepmother, my brother and sister-in-law's baby-to-be, and Michael's two step-niblings, plus socks to fill up most of the room in Alex's stocking, diapers, formula, a card to hold Alex's nanny's Christmas bonus, new pillows for our bed, and a few miscellaneous household items.

Whew.

And that's after I'd shopped online for my mother, my father, my sisters Debbie and Juanita, my brother and sister-in-law, my nephew and two nieces, Michael, Bill, Alex, Alex's baby friend Zoe, and my sister's baby-to-be. And yes, as a matter of fact, I have suggested to my family that the adults draw names. More than once. They all like to buy presents for everyone. And actually, I do too - it's just that a shopping list with 21 people on it gets a trifle overwhelming.

A few things I'm especially proud of:

• Every time I've talked to my father recently, he's wanted to rant about the religious bankruptcy of the religious right - how they've co-opted and twisted the message of Christianity to suit their political purposes, and how misguided the Left is to allow themselves to be portrayed as anti-religion. So for Christmas, he's getting Jim Wallis's God's politics: Why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn't get it, in the Audio CD version because he can't see well enough to read anymore.



• Dad's also getting a pound of dark-chocolate-covered ginger, because I have been his daughter for 32 years and I know well the depths of his heart.



• I managed to be very restrained, shopping for Alex. It was difficult, because OMG it's her first Christmas and toys aren't actually all that expensive compared to adult presents and just look at all the cool stuff out there. But I knew that she'd be getting a lot of presents from the rest of the family, and it's easy to overwhelm a baby, so Michael and I are going with quality rather than quantity. She's getting a "curiosity cube" toy with lots of manipulable parts (which plays to her brand-new small motor skills), a lift-the-flap book, and a jingle bell shaker just like the ones we use at library story hour. I am gleefully sure that she'll love all three things.



• For the baby my sister will be adopting from Guatemala, I was able to find a bilingual English/Spanish version of one of Alex's very favorite books, Where's the Baby?/Donde esta el bebe? It's one of those books that has a mystifyingly strong appeal for the tiny, and I think it will be nice for her to have books in both the baby's intended languages. My Puerto Rican RA approved the quality of the translation, which is of course critical.[1]

[1] I once bought a "take back the night" T-shirt at a college protest which supposedly included the slogan in both English and Spanish. I wore it with pride until a fluent Spanish speaker told me that the Spanish version translated as, approximately, "Pick up the night in your hands and move it towards the back." Oops.

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

"Pick up the night in your hands and move it towards the back."

Bwahahaha! Pick up the ... BWA! HA!

*pause* *look at it again*

BWAHAHAHA!

-J

[rivka.livejournal.com]

And this was before BabelFish.

[gtrout.livejournal.com]

Actually, I really like this line, and its unintentionally surrealist-poetic imagery. Especially because it leads [me] to the idea that once you've done this, you'll see what was behind it.