Its Christmas Eve so its Panto Time

Oh no it isn't!! Oh yes it is!!!

Every year our Social Services Dept arranges for adoptive and foster families to go to a private showing of the Panto, free of charge :-) Its always on the morning of Christmas Eve and we've been going every year since Little Prince was placed with us and it gets us in the Christmas mood :-) Unfortunately this year Mr Messy had to be at OUR shop waiting for clients to collect their Christmas orders, so me and Drama Teen took the littlies. This was Princess Lollipop's first year watching the Panto, and we had no idea how she would react or if she would cope with it!!

The show started with the Villain and Princess Lollipop HATED it, she started to cry and squirm about on my knee :-( At one point I thought I would have to take her out of the theatre, but once the more jolly characters came on stage she was much happier. She even started clapping and shouting the character's catchphrases :-) But she didn't warm up to the Villain at all, and started to cry every time he came on stage!

After the Panto we went out for lunch and then drove back home to our village and delivered the last of the Christmas cards, before coming home. Mr Messy arrived a little while after we got home and he took Princess Lollipop upstairs for a nap. This gave us the opportunity to get the Christmas Tree and decorations up (finally!). I sent Little Prince up to ask Drama Teen to come down and help us. She came down and announced she was eating one of her pasta meals (in her room which she knows she isn't supposed to do!!) and watching a dvd. I asked her to come back down when she'd finished and thought she wouldn't be too long. After about half an hour I sent Little Prince up to see what was going on. Instead of just asking his big sister if she was ready to come down yet, he told her to come down and switched off her TV!! So Drama Teen came stomping down the stairs in a foul mood! She said her dvd was really interesting and she couldn't see the point in putting up the Tree or decorations as its already Christmas Eve. I said we WERE going to put the Tree and decorations up, and she started to pull her face. After about ten more minutes of her looking so miserable, I asked her to smile and at least pretend she was enjoying this! She pulled a horrible grimace and I lost it! I shouted and yelled and said if she didn't want to be part of the family and do things with us, she should go back to her room. I lost it so badly mainly due to this being the last straw, Drama Teen has been refusing to join in more and more family outings/occasions recently, but still expects us to run around ferrying her back and forth to see her boyfriend and is always asking us to buy her clothes, usually expensive ones! I'm fed up of her taking all the time and not wanting to give anything back. To my great shame, I shouted that if she wasn't prepared to be part of the family I could ring Social Services and ask them to find her a foster family. I regretted my words immediately and wished I could call them back, but that's not possible :-(

So me and Little Prince put up the Tree and decorated it on our own. We put the TV on a music channel that was playing Christmas songs to help us get in the mood. Little Prince was an excellent help and stayed as calm as he could in the circumstances :-) Mr Messy came down just as we were putting the decorations on the tree and asked where Drama Teen was, I explained what had happened and he asked Little Prince to go and get her to come downstairs. Mr Messy managed to persuade Drama Teen to join in the family decorating ritual, and she took over LMS's job of putting the crib together. When we had finished decorating the Tree and Drama Teen had helped me put the lights on, Mr Messy made his contribution to the show - he put the Fairy on top of the tree!! We have had this little Fairy since we first had a Christmas Tree together, and even though she is much too small for our current size Tree we still use her :-)

We managed to finish all the decorations and get the boxes put away before Princess Lollipop woke up from her nap. I had a frantic run round to find my camera so that I could take her picture when she first saw the Tree, but once I found it Drama Teen carried Princess Lollipop in to see what we had been up to. Princess Lollipop was stunned and a little scared of the Tree at first! She wouldn't even walk past it to get to Mummy! But after ten minutes or so she calmed down and was fascinated by it :-) The next challenge is to keep her fiddly fingers off it lol.

My next panic was realising we had forgotten to buy a carrot for Rudolph! This would never do, Little Prince would be devastated!! So me and him got in the car and drove to the shop in the next village and got the so important carrot, and we went a bit mad with "snacks" too!! Well its only Christmas once a year :-)

The littlies had their tea once me and Little Prince got back, and after a bit of TV I got Little Prince to bed. Christmas Eve is the one day of the year there is NO trouble getting him to go up lol. Although he was too excited to go straight to sleep and we heard him banging around in his room for ages after he was supposed to be fast asleep!! Drama Teen came down and spent some time here with us, before deciding she was off to bed too. Now we only have to persuade Princess Lollipop to go to sleep and we can prepare for tomorrow morning :-) She is getting very sleepy so hopefully it won't be too much longer!! I really hope so anyway as I have a bit of wrapping to finish off!!