Chinese New Year (thoughts)

So, obviously, this is an out of place post since the lunar year was last month. But since Willow associated Santa with Chinese New Year and thinks Sacha Baron Cohen's charactor, Thénardier, in Les Mis, is also Santa... and seeing as I've been eating a lot of miso lately as I've realised it's delicious with just about everything.... anyways, it popped back into my mind.

Pictured: Santa.

It's weirdly freeing having no one else around to celebrate the lunar new year with. Sad and lonely, but you're free to do what you want. Beat your own path, so to speak.

In the car, before we saw the lion dance, Willow was asking about the whole thing and asked if Santa would be there too. Later that night, she was telling us how Santa was there, with the dragons, and they said "how do you do," and Santa let her pat the reindeer.

Right.

But it got me thinking. And so when we went home, we left out a red paper plate of salad for the dragon to eat. At this point I feel like I should clear something up. We went to the lion dances, but I call the things that dance dragons. There's a difference between a Chinese lion dance and a Chinese dragon dance that wikipedia explains, but.... Willow knows what a lion looks like. You know, roar lion that lives on the savanna. And Willow can be very literal. Like sometimes she scolds me for calling her honey, because she's not honey, she's Willow! Anyways, I decided it was easier to call it a lion dance, with dancing dragons.
So anyways. We put out a paper plate of salad greens for the dragons to eat, since the dancing dragons that we saw dancing were jumping for lettuce, so Willow now understands that dragons eat lettuce.
In the morning, Willow found a toy dragon (one I got when I went to see "How to Train Your Dragon" last year, but shhhh) and that the dragon had taken a bite out of the paper plate. The dragon taking a bite out of the plate made an impression on her as she still mentions it, even though the lunar new year was a month ago. It's something I think we will totally do every year now- a new tradition for our hybrid family. I mean, we leave cookies out for Santa, why not leafy greens for a dragon? Next year too, we might also make paper lanterns.

But best thing of all? Willow's finally started to eat her leafy greens as they are "dragon food."