Our Children are Spoiled and Don't Even Know It

What can I say? By the end of our gift opening, which lasted all of 50 minutes, the entire floor was covered with bits of wrapping paper, boxes, tags and twisty tie thingys that we had to un-do to get to some of the toys. This after Wayne told me of his Christmases growing up when they got one gift each.

We got the girls to bed a little too late on Christmas Eve. They were downstairs watching A Christmas Story while Wayne and I were upstairs, enjoying a glass of wine and some uninterrupted conversation. Uninterrupted conversation! What IS that?! We were loathe to end it by ending the movie early, but at 9:00 Lindsey finally came up and said, "It's over and Marissa's sleeping." Oops, Marissa's sleeping. Uh oh...

It took all of 10 minutes to put them to bed, then we traipsed downstairs to get "Santa's" gifts out of the closet and put them under the tree. Then off to bed we went.

We were awoken at 5:30 am by a squeal from Lindsey's room. "Eeeee!" she said. Then little footsteps as she ran into our room and jumped into our bed. "I think Santa's been here!" she says. Ummm...maybe, but we ain't checkin' at 5:30 in the morning to find out.

We got her to go lay there for another hour but she didn't go back to sleep. We finally got up at 6:30; Lindsey ran downstairs quickly to confirm that yes indeed, Santa had been to our house and left a whole bunch of presents! By this time Marissa was up -- she was about to start crying from being woken up, then she remembered it was Christmas! So downstairs we all went to check out the presents with instructions to look but not touch.

I was in the kitchen making coffee and Wayne was opening the blinds when I heard Lindsey exclaim, "How come Santa has the same wrapping paper as we do?!"  Hmmm...guess we'll have to change that little fact next year. Hopefully she won't remember that Santa uses paper that she bought with me at the store.

Favorite gifts were definitely the Snuggie (thank you, Aunt Shelly and Uncle Steve!) and the new nightgowns from Grandpa Tom & Meme. This was followed by the Strawberry house for Lindsey and the Tinkerbell playset for Marissa. We've been getting a lot of use out of Connect Four as well, a gift Wayne and I picked out that Lindsey hadn't asked for.

Marissa had asked Santa for dress up ballet clothes, which she did get, sans the ballet slippers. She said, "Maybe he forgotted that I wanted ballet slippers." Well, maybe the dress up set we bought didn't come w/ballet slippers! Thankfully Lindsey's got ballet slippers around...somewhere, we'll just have to find them for Marissa.

She had also asked for a game called Elefun for both she and Lindsey, which they also received. Ironically, that game has gotten the least attention and been played with the smallest amount of time. Shocking.

Lindsey had asked for a swing for her backyard from Santa, but surprisingly hasn't mentioned disappointment at not getting it. Perhaps that's because there's a good 2 feet of snow on the ground outside and she hasn't actually breathed in fresh air for more than 2 minutes in about 3 days.

The rest of Christmas Day was...well, to be totally honest it was trying. We had two sleep-deprived girls trying to play with their own toys in the same space (why, oh why do they insist on playing in the same room?) We had to separate them several times and they needed constant parental supervision to not get into scraps with each other. Marissa threw her own Tinkerbell toy and now has a door on it that is constantly falling off and needs to be put back on about every five minutes. She now knows the rule that if she throws her toys she loses them for the rest of that day, so no more toys were thrown that day.

They were well behaved during dinner at least, which was good so that we could all enjoy it. Marissa our vegetarian decided that she didn't want the steak and found a pint of grape tomatoes in the frig that she devoured instead. Works for me.

They were both in bed by a reasonable hour and slept past 7:00 the next morning, so the 26th was a MUCH more pleasant day. They took turns w/each other, had fun, and both got separate play time in their own room with their own toys for a while, a needed break from each other. And Wayne and I both enjoyed playing games with them alternately. I'm sure it will be so much fun when both girls are at a closer developmental level when we can play games the four of us. Right now we have to play one-on-one with one or the other -- Marissa can't follow the rules of many of Lindsey's games, and Lindsey doesn't care to play many of Marissa's younger games. So we kept the Christmas enjoyment up through the rest of the weekend.