Sheep's Legs

Nativity ornament

I love Christmas. I love reading the Christmas story and celebrating when Jesus was born. For me, the spirit of Christmas is the spirit of Christ. It is because of this that I love the Nativity. My mother in law gave Tim and I a beautiful nativity Christmas ornament the year of our first Christmas after being married. The photo is quite poor - the ornament is a muted, 'old world' gold and displays the nativity three dimensionally all the way around it. It is one of my favourite ornaments.

I have a few nativity sets. I learned the hard way that anything on display in a home with young children needs to be able to be touched and played with (read that as 'I have a broken nativity set because I told my children not to touch it believing they wouldn't touch it!')! Here are some of the nativity sets that my children love to play with.

Block Nativity

Soft Nativity sewn from a purchased panel and stuffed.

Purchased Felt Nativity - all in one piece (i.e. attached to the creche!).

Purchased Felt Nativity - moveable figures. I love that the creche stores the figures when it is time to pack it away!

Now, I do have a few little (and I do mean little - no taller than 5cm!) Nativity sets. I figure that if they get broken, they get broken while they are being loved!

No sooner had I put the breakable little Nativity sets on display this year than Eli began using them in some lovely imaginative play. It was delightful to watch. Later in the day I was vacuuming near the Nativity and went to rearrange the figures.

I noticed that the sheep (missing from this photo) looked a little different. It was missing three legs! I recalled hearing a noise during Eli's imaginative play that in hindsight was a sheep bouncing on the tiled floor. My heart sank, as I realized that the legs were now most likely in the vacuum cleaner! I looked around on the floor where the Nativity was sitting in the vain hope that I would find three 4mm long white legs. I didn't. I then considered snapping off the third leg and just having the sheep sit on its belly as though its legs were tucked underneath (the cow is doing it, why not the sheep?). Surely snapping off the leg was better than rummaging around in the barrel of the vacuum cleaner? I had a look in the container of the vacuum cleaner and, to my delight, I saw a little leg (emphasis on the little!) without having to rummage around in the ...vacuum cleaner yuk. I picked it up, cleaned it and super glued it back on. It was only then that I realized I had added to my dilemma. A sheep with two legs was worse than a sheep with one. Now I needed two more legs or I would have to snap off the two it had.

Two legged sheep - the second leg is behind the visible front leg!

At this point Lily asked me what I was doing. A moment later she let out a shout. She had looked and found another leg! It was on the floor, right up against the skirting board (so I must be really good at vacuuming!).

Three legged sheep.

As delighted as I was at now having three legs (at least the sheep would be able to stand with three legs!), deep down I knew that the fourth leg was most likely in the vacuum cleaner container with all the other...yuk stuff. So, I donned my latex gloves and dove in. I was ready to give up when I saw something that made my heart sing. A dusty little leg. So the sheep is now whole again. And for those that like a moral to their stories? Don't be too hasty to snap off a sheep's leg!!!