Just a Little Sacrilegious

First off, no I haven't been posting much lately. Starting a week or so before Christmas with Andrea's birthday and continuing through Fiona's birthday, we face a steady stream of big events. Combine that with the normal obligations of earning a living, plus the great delight we had last week of having workmen traipsing through our home at all hours to install a new bathroom and I've barely had time or energy to post about every amazing thing Fiona does.

Which doesn't mean she's stopped doing amazing things. So here's one from the holidays:

Toddlers can turn anything into a chance for role playing and pretend, so it shouldn't have surprised us when Fiona picked up the pieces in Nana and Pop's nativity set and started playing. Some of it was fairly benign -- Mary singing a lullaby to baby Jesus, or the animals taking short trips away from the manger.

Then Fiona started incorporating other elements into the scene. Bugs Bunny. A gorilla that sings the Macarena (I'm guessing that toy was not purchased this decade). A few airplanes (why make the Magi walk when the miracles of modern transport are available?).

And then one day Fiona came upstairs from playing with the nativity set to tell me that, regardless of what you might have heard in Silent Night, the infant in the manger was still an infant.

"Daddy," she said. "Baby Jesus is being terrible."


Once we flew back east we did a second Christmas with the east coast parents (did I mention we've had a lot of events in the past few weeks?). Fiona quickly found the nativity set in Grandma and Papa's living room, and once again she spent the afternoon moving the various figures around the room.

On Sunday at Fiona's birthday party, the topic of the nativity set came up, and Aunt Kathy told Fiona "that was my nativity set you played with."

And, proving that her foray into sacrilege isn't necessarily permanent, Fiona forcefully replied:

"No, Aunt Kathy. It's baby Jesus's nativity."

Touché.