Christmas Already?

I have been fighting with blogger the past day and a half and it is finally working well enough for me to write today's article. Being home for the Christmas holidays we have been contemplating how we might be able to integrate our family into our celebrations. Obviously having a child with a compromised immune system it is difficult to attend large family gatherings. That said, we have finally figured out how we will be celebrating this year's holiday.

My family is Italian and when we were younger we always celebrated Christmas Eve at my Nonna and Nonno's. My family in addition to my cousins, aunt's and uncles on my mother's side would all go to their home for Christmas dinner. It would always consist of lasagna, meat balls, sausages, breaded veal, as well as many other things that my Nonna and Nonno would spend all day in their basement cooking. Before dinner my sister and brother in addition to all my cousins would give the adults a break by spending about an hour going door to door, through the neighborhood singing Christmas carols. Then, after dinner we would all congregate around the dinner table and play Bingo in Italian.

Eventually, my mother took over the tradition and what once was an intimate gathering of family on my mother's side grew to a spectacular celebration of family and friends. Each year on Christmas Eve, our family from both sides, in addition to many of our friends congregate to my parents' home for a large feast and a couple of hours of Italian Bingo. You can now see that under these circumstances we would not be able to spend Christmas with my family and friends. However, we are extremely delighted that this year's festivities have been modified to include Parker, my wife and I. We wanted to be able to have Parker and his cousins spend time together, so for this year, the celebration has gone back to its roots. It will be similar to the celebration that me, my sister and brother grew up with. This year, Parker's Nonna and Nonno will be having lasagna, meat balls, sausages and breaded veal with their children and grand-children just like my Nonna and Nonno did back when I was just a child.

Parker has never played with his cousins before, to be honest, other than the time in which they crawled over the car to get a peek at him, he has never even seen them. Now, of course, Parker will not be touching his cousins or even touching the same toys that they are, but it will be nice that Parker will be able to have some parallel play with my nephews.

I am extremely excited and looking forward to Christmas Eve with my family. I just hope that everyone stays healthy over the holidays so that we may spend Christmas Eve as a family. As for Christmas day, Parker will spend the morning opening gifts with his Nanna and Grand-Dad and then we will have Nonna and Nonno over for dinner so that the six of us, along with Parker may have a wonderful Christmas dinner that I shall prepare.

Some of you may think it is a little strange to speak of Christmas so early in the season but I was so excited about all of the accomodations that people have made for us that I wanted to write about it today. That said, tomorrow is Halloween and we are also excited to dress Parker up in his costume and show him to the nurses and doctors at Sick Kid's. We have also decided to drop by my Nonna's home tomorrow so that she may see Parker in his costume.

Lastly, we are expecting to see the article about Parker in tomorrow's Toronto Star. So check out the Star tomorrow to see if Parker made the Tuesday edition.