Tonight, once Kiddo finishes her chores, we will watch the first act of The MeshugaNutcracker!, which is a retelling of some of the stories of Chelm with a klezmer version of The Nutcracker Suite as accompaniment. It's available on BroadwayHD, and it features a couple of really wonderful local actors, who apparently usually tour with the show each winter. I mean, not this winter, naturally, but usually. I've really enjoyed working with them in the past, so it's a blessing to see their smiles.
Fuzzy is pleased that there is such a fun little show available to celebrate the girls' Jewish heritage, and he is hoping that they will like it. We're a blended family, and it's easy to find Christmas entertainment, but it's a lot harder to find fun Hanukkah shows. We were reminiscing today about when I had more free time and would obsessively watch Ovation's Battle of the Nutcrackers: Grudge Match. I just realized that I think our new cable package includes Ovation, so I might be able to catch it again. The Battle of the Nutcrackers is a whole bunch of different interpretations of The Nutcracker by various ballet choreographers and companies. It's fantastic. Fuzzy tolerated it, though he did point out that it was a lot of the same music over and over again. If Ovation doesn't do it this year, I'm combining streaming services and creating my own. I just hope I can find the Matthew Bourne version.
Fair was supposed to open a couple days ago. On an ordinary year, I would have more work than time for the next four days. Instead, I'm making an advent calendar for the girls from a panel I saw in the fabric catalog a couple months ago. It's really cute--a tree with 25 ornaments. The directions told me to use stick-on velcro to attach the ornaments to the tree, but it just seemed a bit tacky, especially since I plan to use it for multiple years. Instead, I'm sewing jewelry pinbacks to all of them, so the girls can choose where each piece goes. It's going to be a bit of work this week, but I'm hopeful.
Perhaps this will help to keep Tiny off the regular tree when it goes up. It's worth a try. Seriously considering putting up a little fence around it. It's been just long enough since Kiddo was a toddler that we honestly do not remember what we did. To be fair, Kiddo was six months younger than Tiny at one Christmas and six months older than Tiny at the next one, so we might have dodged the Destructo-Toddler stage that Tiny is in right now. We also had Kiddo at day care for most of the day almost every day at that point, because we were working so much, so we really only had to keep her away from the tree and presents for a couple hours a day. I think we're going to put it on a table this year and hope for the best. Perhaps all the presents need to just show up at the last minute. Meanwhile, we'll have the little fabric tree on the wall by the hall closet. I wonder if I can get away with making a pocket for the back to hold the rest of the ornaments. To be fair, Tiny figured out how zippers work a few weeks ago, which is why we keep finding her mostly naked when we get her from her nap. Apparently, her tummy is amazing and must be inspected regularly. Her socks also regularly lose their position, as toes are much too interesting to be contained at bedtime. Then she cries, because she's cold.
I'm concerned that Kiddo will be sad to lose the chance to poke and prod and guess at the present pile. We are both youngest children, so we are very aware that we don't know what it's like to have a younger sibling, nor how it feels to have been the only little one around most of your life. When she was really tiny, we would do our celebration on the morning of December 24, then spent the night at Fuzzy's parents' house to have Christmas morning there. It was a lot of celebration for a little girl, and we eventually edited it down to Christmas Eve at the grandparents', then Christmas morning at our house. Who knows what this year will look like?
Luckily, Hanukkah is in early December this year, so we can celebrate being together and being safe soon. Maybe I should make a cloth menorah with pinnable flames for Tiny and Kiddo as well. We need all the festivity we can get.
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