"Where is Baby Jesus!"

Mind you that is said with frustration and with a mother's tone . . ."Where is Baby Jesus?"  That statement is sometimes followed by "Why can't you just leave the poor baby alone?"  One of my better crazier statements as a mother, "Come on guys, He died for you, why do you have to play with Him?" (I know, what the heck does that mean?)


I know that sounds so bad but as a Catholic mom I struggle with loving our nativity sets and all of their Christmas beauty.  J and I have taken a few trips over the years and we always try to come back with an ornament for our tree and new nativity set that has the flavor of the area we visited.  You would be surprised how different a set from Mexico is from a set from Canada.  Often they are not very costly just beautiful in their own rite.  I enjoy them more than anyone else.  Now I look for ones that will be harder to break.

When we first married I was blessed to get a couple things from both our moms.  J's mom gave us a tree topper that I hope never breaks.  It is a Holy Mary Tree Topper.  It isn't exactly like the one pictured here.  It is a little more simple just plain fabrics of blue and white with Mary holding the baby.  It has lights around the base of her dress and under the child.  A night it sets the tree off beautifully.  Hopefully I can search out a picture of her.  I just love it so much.

The other cool gift was the one that I got from my mom.  She started me on a collection of a Fontanini set.  I loved these because they very durable.  They are beautiful.  Over the next few years she grew my collection to be about 14 pieces or so.  I have the family, the wise men, the shepherds, animals and angels. 

Years go by and the set has held up pretty well.  I should have been more protective of it but I love that the children interact with the holy family.  I love that this set is very durable and that they can do this without much damage.  Now that our sets have grown in numbers the kids like that set the best.  It is the one they get to play with.

In recent years we have had a harder and harder time keeping track of our dear baby Jesus.  It is not a stretch that Jason or I will walk into the room and can be heard screaming after we notice that Batman is on top of the manger and that Mary is resting in the front seat of a Barbie car, and the baby Jesus is now where to be seen.  We often conduct searches until we locate the little one.  Some times He is found with the Barbie girls, sometimes He is on a mission with the army men, sometimes He in church (or the candy shop) of our miniature village.  This year he has spent some time with the Toy Story people and hanging out with Jumba.  Apparently Jumba likes to take the Baby Jesus on a tour of our home.

The best moments are when you catch a conversation.  Baby Jesus is always baby Jesus, for some reason they never pretend that He is someone elses baby.  I love that.  So you can hear, "So Jesus do you like the Wii, which game should we play?"  or "Jesus stand clear, I will protect you, well unless you want to make the bad guy disappear."  You really just never know how Jesus will respond.  I am always amazed that he is always Him.

All of our decorations have been picked up but not packed up and put away.  The outside lights just needed to be moved to attic along with the trees and ornaments.  Today we did that and started the longer process of wrapping our beloved Santas, Snowmen, and Nativity Sets for their long summer nap until the next Holiday season.  Sure enough when putting the Fontanini set away we can't find Baby Jesus.  So in my house I could be heard screaming, "Where is Baby Jesus?  Does anyone know Where is Baby Jesus?"  The sad thing is that Pickles replied with full knowledge of what I was asking.  "I don't know mom, but the last time I saw Him He was playing with Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb."

I am going to assume that He will show up when we are finished packing and when He is finished playing.