We managed to sleep till about 4am, which is not that bad considering how early we collapsed asleep. This was to be a Christmas Day like no other. All of Harriet's presents will be coming later so all we had for her was a CBeebies DVD from my brother's family. The original plan was to arrive on December 20th and buy her a trike during the week but alas that was out of the window too.
The first thing we did was go to a nearby shop and buy some essential provisions. Next we took a walk out to Central Park. It was bitterly cold so we didn't hang around for very long. It had become clear that Pip was going to need a coat - we were criticised by a homeless woman we met on the return journey for not covering her.
Our Christmas lunch was at a French restaurant round the block. The food was excellent and the service was good but there was a horrendous smell of paint. This was apparently coming from the adjacent property and it really detracted from the whole experience. That said, Harriet was fine and as usual was the star of the show and pulled in the fellow diners.
We skyped the family back home. Our chatterbox daughter is so often quiet on the phone and starts babbling as soon as it has gone off. She started to get into a bit more this time and it was so nice to see her dancing and waving across the miles.
That was the end of the day for us pretty much. For Americans Thanksgiving is the big party and Christmas lacks the importance the British ascribe to it. So there were no Christmas specials of our favourite shows - in fact we are struggling to find anything on our cable service.
A quiet, unusual Christmas but of course still very exciting to be in this place. It wasn't a white Christmas but we were promised snow the following day.
