Julie & Cory: Hanging of the Greens

On Thursday night, campus had its annual Hanging of the Green's holiday celebration with the lighting of the Christmas tree in the Williams Center. We dressed Claire in her festive Christmas pajamas and let her run around before bed. She has a blast, and I think the students enjoyed her strutting her stuff in her red pajamas and red boots. Right before the formal program began, our campus President asked Claire if she wanted to light the tree. President Horvath showed her the remote (what almost two year old would turn down a chance to play with a remote), she said 'Yeah' (sounded as if she was a 14 year old saying 'Of course I want to, duh.'). I held her while the audience counted down from 10 (10 is a long time to wait when you were promised a button to press), she made it to 3 before she grabbed the remote and pressed every button on it. Everyone including Claire clapped. For me it was a neat celebration since I used to plan the event when I was in college. Eleven years prior I emceed the event holding another child from the crowd. I never thought then that I would be up there with my daughter continuing the tradition.

On Sunday night after dinner, Claire was in the kitchen with Julie and she asked for an Altoid (I usually give her 1/32 of a mint), she comes into the family-room with 1/2 of an Altoid and proceeded to eat it. Lets just say she made an 'interesting' face, I asked if she wanted to spit it out and she walked over like she was going to but stopped. She then opened her mouth to show me it was all gone, and then roared at me like a lion. She is so my daughter...

Overall the weekend was very productive and we got most of the Christmas decorations up, Claire loved being able to direct Mommy on where to put the ornaments on the tree. It is funny though that all of my breakable fish, deer and other assorted ornaments are all within the reachable radius of a toddler who has been known to aggressively play with them.