Rhino Nose Virus

Warning to Emma: This post contains more talk of boogers.

In the normal ways of little boys, my nephew today was battling one nostril full of snot, and one bleeding nostril. He has a cold he can't seem to shake. I taunt him and call him 'little booger boy'. He told me to stop saying that, and that he has boogers because he has a Rhino Nose Virus. I told him it's a good thing he doesn't have a Hippo Ear Virus, as those are quite nasty.

I finished wrapping the family gifts at 2:21 am this morning, and thusly took them all to my parents' house today. Gracie woke me up around 8am, so I'm quite tired. My nephew can read now (he's in kindergarten), so I made up a code to put on the packages that were for him that I didn't want him to shake. He went through all the rest and made sure he knew for whom they were intended. I had to explain that when the package read "To: Mom; From: Jenny", that it didn't mean the package was for his mom, it was meant for Grand (what he calls my mother). There were also things for him from some of Santa's reindeer. He really enjoyed digging through all of them and seeing which ones were his.

There was almost a big scene before lunch when my older sister told my mom that they would not be able to attend Christmas until the evening of Christmas Day, as my nephew's other set of grandparents and other aunt could only attend a Christmas meal during the day. They don't get to see my nephew very often, and my mother gets to see him every week, so it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to tell mom that they would be quite late for our Christmas Day lunch.

In the end, we're just going to push back our meal to dinnertime instead of lunch, which is ok with everyone else. I feel badly that my sister had to have such an uncomfortable conversation with my mother, and of course my mother overreacted and placed blame and played the martyr. However, I've had an absolute ton of experience with awkward/uncomfortable situations like these, and I did notice some opportunity for my sister in the way the conversation was phrased, where it was held, etc.

Anyway, I'm sure my sister was very stressed leading up to and going into that conversation and is most likely feeling much better now that it is done.

I'm looking forward to a fast-paced 7 days leading up to Christmas. This is the fun time of year.