The spirit of Christmas

Christmas was nice this year. There's usually some type of holiday drama, but this year everything was unusually calm. I fought with my niece, played video games with my nephew, and none of the adults actually fought or ran out of the house crying this year so I deemed this a successful celebration of Christmas 2006. There was only one incident that actually caused a bit of drama, but it had me, my sisters, and my mom cracking up. I bought this plush rocking camel for my sister's 2 year old (Taylor). The camel seemed really cute online (that's the danger of online shopping) but one of my sisters said I didn't factor in Taylor's "nervous disposition" as her mom puts it. She's a very timid little girl that's prone to hysterics if something frightens her. Well, I put this rocking camel together at my mom's house in Dublin and when we all saw it, the first sentence out of my sister's mouth was "ohhh, that's really ugly." I originally thought it was cute but somewhere in transit an eye came unstitched and it's stare was a bit cock-eyed and extremely disconcerting. I whipped out some thread and a needle and managed to get the eye somewhat straight, but when I tried to cover it up in a big box for the big Christmas surprise, that's when I realized I may have messed up picking this thing out for Taylor. Staring out of the box, it had acquired a menacing life of it's own. It was so scary we actually laughed till tears rolled down my face thinking of little Taylor's reaction if we let her open the box and see this abomination peering back at her.
Needless to say I just pulled it out of the box Xmas morning to avert Taylor's surprise becoming one of those moments that scar children for the rest of their life. Even though I made it look as harmless as possible (with baby dolls riding the back of it), she was still terrified of it. I didn't capture that moment of absolute terror on film as her mom hoisted her in the air to drop her on this beast, but believe me, that image and her screams were was too painful to share. She warmed up to it a little after I "fed" Mr. Scary Camel potato chips and ensured her he would not eat my fingers off but it didn't help that the older kids screamed in horror too when they saw it sitting in the middle of the den...