Waiting for Santa

This is dedicated to, and in the style of Horrigans (well, kinda) for her amazingly kind gift of a Blip membership. Thanks to Horrigans too, I can now study stats with the discovery I use the word "Christmas" 310% more than the average Blipper. I could never have imagined anyone doing something so lovely for me and I would love to have seen my face of excited happiness when Blip duly notified me. I was like a little child at Christmas (see, there I go again). And now I have a Blipfolio too so I uploaded one image from today's session.

And thank you to everyone for your congratulations and heartwarming comments on my 365 yesterday. It felt very good indeed.

Did a mini Christmas shoot late this afternoon for a client to whom I delivered a huge order of prints, actually my first big client print order, excellently printed by Smugmug.

The rain was on respite for at least 30 minutes, but in a rainbowless sky which once again opened up its wounds, clearly the catharsis of the last week's tears having done it no good whatsoever, but not before I ran outside with the boys to stand on the soggy terrace and breathe it in. Gorgeous blood red roses arrived from my family for Callum's baptism and a delightful box of glass baubles from an unknown friend to be determined. Absolute Radio has been playing on my Mac, much as it has been since '93, dipping into Christmas songs, and peppered with Embrace and Kamakawiwo'ole's Somewhere over the rainbow two magical days in a row. Edit: it's playing now for the 3rd time in 2 days. Melts my heart, runs right through me. It's the theme to graduates at the early intervention school the boys attend/ed.

We sat, Reuben and me, learning opposites and he has a great hand on them in sign and spoken words. Problem is I keep having to delve into the dictionary to keep up with his pace.

Tomorrow, we head to the snow for the afternoon in the mountains that hang over Los Angeles with a sleigh. I can only imagine how the cool, incessant rain that has fallen here will have magically transformed into snow at altitude. I've been just too jealous of you all back home with those snowman and snowball shots. Tonight I'll be editing whilst the boys sleep.

We'd been talking about Santa and, standing behind the Christmas tree to gaze out at the dense grey weeping clouds, Callum looked longingly for the big man. So what happened next? A huge smile erupted upon his face, but I love here the anticipation. He's in exactly the same spot as Reuben here.

Tonight, Callum fell asleep in my arms at bedtime whilst I sang Silent Night, The Christmas Song and O Holy Night, much as I would have done in my mother's dear arms as a child.