Christmas in a house with two small children is a magical experience, and I highly recommend it. Readers: if there are no children in your particular home, I'd suggest knocking on doors in your neighborhood at 4am on Christmas morning until someone yanks open their door half-dressed, covered in glitter and tape, incapable of completing a sentence, and looking like they were just hit by a holly jolly semi truck. Congratulations! You've found the home full of preschoolers! Sit back and enjoy - it'll all be over by 6am.
For the weeks leading up to Christmas, Laney would get so overwhelmed by adrenaline just thinking about Santa that she would start running in circles.
I had taken her to the Lions Club Christmas Tree Sale to buy a pretty tree for our new house: a 7-footer, I was thinking. Instead, she freaked out that the volunteer was using a chainsaw to lop off the bottom of the trunks and help shape the trees; Laney abhors loud noises. So we huddled in the back of the warehouse as far from the power tools as possible, and that's where she saw this four-foot junker and fell in love. I picked it up, swore to the staff that we did NOT need it trimmed (and if we did, we could probably use scissors), and ran out to the car where I tossed it in the passenger seat. When we got home, I put it on a small side table to make it look more lofty, but it was really a putting-perfume-on-a-pig situation.
Excellent $10 investment.
On Christmas Eve, Laney wanted to camp out on the floor in Hagen's room downstairs, so she'd be 20 yards closer to catching Santa in the act.
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| bedtime stories |
...and then Hagen wanted to do it, too, because it looked like so much fun. You two were so jacked up on excitement that you didn't go to sleep until after 10pm, which made Santa's elves very cranky. I mean - I'm guessing.
Laney had set out a plate of snacks for Santa and his reindeer - mostly the reindeer. There were originally five cookies on the plate, but every time Hagen walked past the coffee table, he snatched one. I think if I were Santa and whooshed into a house to find a plate of old purple carrots, mushy apples and a solitary cookie, I'd skip that house entirely and keep the presents in the sleigh. Overall, I'd be a petty and vindictive Santa, so it's probably good news for the children of the world that I don't have the gig.
When Santa had finished his appointed round, this was the look of our living room:
Your dad built Laney a dress up station for her room (pictured, right), with room for all her princess dresses, witch get-ups, magician's cape, etc, and then bins underneath for her shoes, tiaras and handbags.
Laney woke up at 4am, ready to open presents, but Grandma Sue had spent the night on the couch and Christmas saint that she is, convinced Laney that 6am might be a more appropriate time to open gifts.
At 5:58, Laney couldn't handle it anymore, and we all had to get up and start opening presents. Of course, she noticed the dress-up stuff right away.
We learned very quickly that Laney and Hagen have very different philosophies when it comes to opening presents. Laney wants to set a speed record for getting the paper off anything with her name on it. Hagen wants to open one present at a time and savor it. For example, he noticed Santa had left him a coloring book, and would have been perfectly happy to spend a few hours coloring each and every page in the book methodically before moving on to his next gift.
This made Laney nuts. When she had finished opening her presents, he still had a dozen under the tree... and didn't seem to be in any hurry to open them. In fact, at one point, he went into his bedroom and came back with a truck he's owned since he was born and started playing with that. I half-suspect that just a few days shy of turning two, he's already figured out how to best make his sister's head explode.
You'll notice Laney's in four or five different outfits in these pictures, and I can't possibly put them in chronological order. The girl changed clothes more often than Carrie Underwood did hosting the Country Music Awards.
I'm not at all ashamed to say I did a lot of my toy Christmas shopping at Goodwill. First, because you can get a sack of 5 like-new Barbies for $4, and since I know they're all destined to have their hair painted with nail polish, that's just about the right price point for me. Also, I saw a photoessay earlier this year about the Chinese factory workers who make the toys we buy here, and it bummed me out sufficiently that I'm trying to create less of a demand for those goods.
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| Thor built a Barbie bed so they'd all have a place to sleep. |
Grandpops and Grandma CC sent you a rocket play tent that was a HUGE hit. It's the perfect hideout for quiet coloring, or in Hagen's case, crawling inside and yelling, "THREE! EIGHT! SIX! BLAST OFF!"
Peg Peg and Tex sent Laney a new suitcase, so she'd be ready for her "next vacation to Disney." Covered in purple butterflies and totally diabolical.
Finally, around 8:30am, Laney asked, "Can I just open all of Hagen's presents?" So we let her. He didn't seem to care.
Around 9:00am, according to Grandma Sue, Laney was working on making a bracelet out of Play Doh when she suddenly fell over sideways and was asleep before she hit the ground.
Making Christmas happen for small children is a lot like planning a wedding - you put a lot of time and effort and planning into making it perfect, and the whole thing is over in the blink of an eye.
Totally worth it, though.
Love,
Mom
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