Christmas Cheer

Ah, Christmas. It turns out that our kids were on the nice list after all. This, despite the request I got yesterday, "Dad, can you help me take Santa's head off?" It was in reference to a Lego Santa minifigure... but still.

We keep monitors in the kids rooms still because we can't really hear them from our room at night. And when the late-night dramas occur, we prefer they wake us up instead of each other. This morning at precisely 6:32 AM, we awoke to the sound of the monitor whispering at us in Ben's voice, "Mommy... Daddy... Can I get up and open presents?"

We convinced him to hang out with us and wait for Penelope to wake up before opening gifts. He can be such a patient little kid when he's well rested! Even so, you could see the anticipation just thrumming through his little body. When he noticed that there were *also* stockings filled by the fireplace, he was so paralyzed with excitement that he dropped his stuffed animals on the floor and just stood there with his mouth open. We let him start digging through his stocking while we waited for Penelope, but we didn't have to wait too long. She woke up about 15 minutes later. After they both took inventory on the contents of their stockings and compared notes, we let them have at the gifts.

Then it was chaos for a while. Between the sounds of paper ripping, you'd hear Ben exclaim "Awesome!" every couple minutes. Penelope would follow up with her own "Awesome!" even if she hadn't opened anything. Ben, holding up a tiny gift, "A small one!"  Penelope, holding up a flat gift, "A thin one!"  It went on like that for a while. When the final swatch of paper hit the ground, they both wanted to play with their new stuff.

Ben got a boomerang, and was eager to try it, "Can I test out the boomerang?"

"Not yet. Wait until we go outside. It isn't an indoor toy."

"Awww.. just one time?"

It didn't take too long before his interest shifted to some new Legos, but we eventually got around to the boomerang too (we'll skip the part where Daddy got it stuck in the tree and had to use Penelope's soccer ball to get it back down.)

Penelope got a little bike, and spent much of the morning riding it from one end of the living room to the other.  Then she'd pick it up, turn it around, and ride it back. This too, we got to test outside later in the day. When she wasn't on the bike she was trying out her new Hello Kitty rain boots and umbrella, "I'm pretending it's raining!"

It was a fun, relaxing day at home with the family, and the subject of poop only came up two or three times (that's pretty low, compared to the average)! That's my poor segue into one of the more memorable Ben quotes of the day : "Today, on Christmas, any time I go pee or poop, I call it a Christmas present!"

To which, I have no response.  Merry Christmas!