(Slap)Happy Holidaze

It's the most wonderful time of the year... made even stupendouser by visits from old friends, a child who now "gets" and completely loves our Festival of Lights, and of course the knowledge that come this time next year, we'll be a party of four.

Where do I start? In England, Christmas is celebrated pretty much throughout the entire month of December (and the stores have been stocking decorations and specials since before Halloween!) but first let me back up to OUR first celebration of the season, a Griswoldian Anglo-Frenchy-Quebequoise-Virginian Thanksgiving.

That's right, our wacky Parisian-dwelling friends –2 families of 'em – were devoted and deranged enough to trek by plane, train, and automobile (literally - Seattle Family flew and Virginia Family drove to the "car chunnel" and then on to Bath). I can now answer "can eleven people be adequately housed in our Great Pulteney abode?" in the affirmative. It was a tight squeeze, and I can't say anyone got much sleep, but for Virginia Mom's pumpkin chiffon pie and Seattle Mom's Midwestern Cheesy Potatoes, it was worth it (normally I would just use initials for these ladies, but they are both "M" which is going to get too confusing over the next several paragraphs).

The 48-hour extravaganza included: a crazy Pub Night Out for the harried husbands, from which they returned asking "now, which novels, besides Sense and Sensibility, did Jane Austen write?" and a subsequent late-night "word association" game suggested by Quebequoise Husband (who had frontloaded the Pub Night with several scotches) which took us from "Shogun" to "Guns and Roses" to "Slash" to "Interesting Hats", an attempted trip to Horse World which ended abruptly at the front door when each and every child stepped out in full weather gear and slipped on the ice that had cruelly formed overnight, a hot water heater that petered out around 11:00 a.m. on Fake Thanksgiving Morning (Saturday), before 2/3 of the house had showered –making for a delightfully-scented dinner – an oven that refused to thoroughly cook root vegetables while blistering our bewildered British turkey, a poor, lone Boy Child who begged for "less princesses, more fighting" and, at the end, a houseful of sniffling, hacking adults who had caught every horrid virus borne by the fruits of our collective loins.

Dry bird? Ripe-smelling guests? Jeff still found plenty to toast.

So what if the turkey tasted like it had cryogenically suspended since The First Thanksgiving? So what if we forgot to tell our children anything about what Thanksgiving means or why we celebrate, and just plunked them down in a corner of the kitchen at an undinnerlike 3 p.m., ordering them to "eat four bites of turkey or no dessert!" So what if Quebequoise Dad mocked our Thanksgiving night viewing selection, "Love Actually," only to collapse in tears during the Portuguese proposal scene? So what if everyone returned to their respective homes in need of industrial-strength antibiotics?

It's Thanksgiving, damnit, and we Americans will have our Midwestern Cheesy Potatoes and Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce no matter what the cost (for the cranberries, about $6/can!). Seriously, we love our crazy copains and are, indeed, thankful that they were brave enough to make the trip.

Twins Molly and Josie reunited (and sitting together in Josie's chair. Could you die?)

Cocobaby - in perhaps the cutest Hipstamatic photo ever taken

We'd scarcely recovered from T-day when the onslaught of Chrimbo Parties began. I squeezed both my bulging belly and increasingly bodacious booty into a fancy new dress, which had fit so beautifully in my first trimester, for Jeff's office holiday party. British Office Christmas Parties... for a broad descriptor, I find myself truly at a loss.

Unlike most U.S. holiday parties, especially in this economy, the British seem to spare no expense in creating boozy, bizarre festivities. The soiree, held in a huge tent at the Bath Racecourses, was two parts child's birthday party and three parts Monty Python, with an "oxygen bar," a karaoke room, face painting, masseuses, a giant snowman and reindeer who both engaged in disturbing and provocative dancing with a scantily clad Christmas fairy, and a mechanical bull. I can't believe I didn't bring my camera, and could only capture these magical, Dickensian moments with my iPhone.

My Marlboro Man lasted six seconds. That's right, seconds.

The Stalactite Theme that would make Martha Stewart's head explode.

Apparently "Emphysema Patient" is, in Britain, a festive holiday look

Remember (cue the tambourines) I am observing all of these shenanigans sober.

Lest we forget, throughout these various Christian-themed affairs we Jews celebrated our own winter festival of Chanukah. It was quite different from any we had celebrated in either New York City (obviously!) or Paris. There was no giant menorah-lighting, no gelt or dreidels in the stores. But we did our best to bring Chanukah to the Brits.

I was so kindly invited to Josie's nursery for a presentation about the holiday, and was genuinely impressed not only by these three-year-old's attention spans, but by their enthusiasm in honoring and celebrating another culture. I fell in love with this school all over again!

Our Menorah Finger Paintings!

We attended a lovely Chanukah party at our new synagogue, and hosted Aussie friends Sarah and Michael and kids for a latke party, where we obsessively listened to the Maccabeats (the song in everyone's Chanukah playlist this year!) and overate!

But there's no escaping Christmas in England - not even at Josie's nursery, which staged an impressive Nativity play. Josie played the Letter Q, and we had practiced her line – "Q is for quiet by the manger's bed" for weeks. A typically antsy 3-year-old, she sat waiting her turn, squirming impatiently on a bench. About 45 seconds before she was to go on, she fell backwards off the bench, whacking her head and drawing gasps from the crowd.

Not wanting to spoil the play, she held back from wailing, and after a brief but impassioned pep talk from moi, she was able to go on! Here's the line (sadly was so verklempt whilst attempting to film that I cut her head off!) with some other additional cute footage:



Last weekend the festivities continued with the annual hypercelebration of my anniversaire, held for the second year in a row in Londontown. We trained up early on Saturday, lunched in Hyde Park with family friends, visited Kensington Palace – the royal apartments are closed for renovation, with a modern art installation of "missing seven princesses" in its place. Cool, if a bit weird, like this Vivienne Westwood bit:



We followed the tour with a stop by Harrod's for a visit to the toy department, where we wandered, goggle -eyed through the aisles of excess, bought Josie an adorable soft play house and accidentally shoplifted a Dora doll in the bottom of the stroller (sorry Mr. Al-Fayed!). Mayfair has become "our" London neighborhood, so it was back to the Park Lane to change for dinner. Our beloved Swedish babysitter's sister Juliette lives in London, so she came over to babysit while Jeff and I headed out for a birthday date!

We went to Trafalgar Square to see the carolers, window-shopped, and collapsed at a lovely corner table at The Square restaurant for a delicious and seemingly endless meal (literally, we had to say, "the check please, and please don't bring us any more food." They ignored us and brought us turkish delight and homemade salted caramel truffles).

I know, lame tree, but apparently the original was burned by protesters on Friday.

Sunday we popped up early for a delicious breakfast (French toast, bien sur) and had just enough time for Jeff's dream London activity: the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum. He begs to go every time, and as our eventual destination for the afternoon was the theater across the street (for Peppa Pig's Party, a surprise for Josie), I couldn't say no. Yes, we had to shield our preschooler's eyes from 2/3 of the traumatic exhibits, but it apparently fulfilled his wildest expectations.

My fave: Princess Diana constructed completely from dryer lint

The biggest news of our holiday season, of course, was the big reveal: the gender of Baby Rothman Deuxieme. Most importantly, of course, the 20-week scan looked lovely, no apparent problems, the "nicest baby" the tech had seen in a long time, and.... ta-da!


It's a boy!

No, you can't tell from the picture, we had to take her word for it. But she was 95% certain! (they'll never say 100%) So.... Josie and I won the pool (I've known it was a boy all along, thanks to very different pregnancy symptoms). Despite a few seconds of buyer's remorse ("hmmm, I think I'd like a sister instead"), Josie is very excited and so are we.

Thursday Josie and I are off to Michigan for Christmas – Jeff will follow on the 23rd and then we'll all zip over to New Jersey for New Year's. Happy happy to everyone, and remember: Q is for quiet by the manger's bed!

Bonne Annee, mes amis!