A Blizzard of Activity on Christmas

When I last wrote, we were preparing for Christmas Eve. I knew it would be a very full holiday weekend, but I did not imagine just how exhausting it would be.

The Christmas cookies and turkey dinner on Christmas Eve turned out well. Our son was happy and excited. Kai declared that Mom and I had earned all of our points on his Christmas chart so that we would get all of our presents. He set out milk and cookies for Santa and went to bed.

Kai was up early on Christmas morning, but not too early. I don’t know if he actually slept through the night for a change or whether he was afraid that Santa would not come if he came out of his room, but he stayed in bed until 6:30 on Christmas morning.

After that, however, the weekend was a whirlwind.

He got us up and then wanted to go downstairs to check out the Christmas tree to see the presents. We let him open the ones in his stocking right away, and he enthusiastically dumped out the contents and went at it.

After that, he had to wait until I took a shower, and he waited pretty patiently while Mom tried to keep him occupied with the Wii. When I came downstairs, however, I saw that he had organized all the presents so that his were in one big pile. It was reminiscent of what I did when I was Kai’s age.

For parents, few things are as fun as seeing your child’s excitement on Christmas morning. Kai ripped open the presents with glee. We had him pause after he opened a couple so that we could eat breakfast, but he snuck open a couple more while we were occupied.

After breakfast, it was a blizzard of activity with wrapping paper flying everywhere, though we tried to get him to slow down long enough to at least notice who gave him each present. He would spend more time playing with some of the presents, but mostly he treated it as a race to open everything up.

After that, it was play time! We spent the morning, and afternoon, and evening playing.

We took one break to play in the snow. Well, he played while I shoveled. And then it was back to playing some more.

The next day, it was more of the same. There was more shoveling, too, as it snowed about eight or nine more inches overnight.

I never thought playing could get to be so exhausting.

But it was so much fun. I don’t know how many more years he will have this innocent excitement about Christmas, but I am enjoying every minute of it now.


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