Christmas at my house

Some funny snippets from my house as we waited for Christmas to arrive:

First there was the "Argument About How Many Days Til Christmas" between Princess and Banana Boy. We have this Snowman countdown calendar and this was the first year that I did not keep track of the days and passed the privilege of flipping snowflakes over to the kids. I was actually quite relieved to pass on this little duty. Every day of the entire week before the Big Day, the snowflake would flip back and forth between two numbers because Princess was counting the day we were on plus the remaining days whereas BB was counting only the days remaining. They bickered back and forth. Each time they passed the Snowman, they would grumble and flip the number to what they felt was correct. They tried to pull me in to settle their argument but did not like my stance of "Well, you both have good points and in a way, you are both correct."

BB told me on Monday, while we were out on an errand that there were exactly 65 hours left until Christmas. I was amazed that he took the time to count and that he was correct if you counted in that we would open gifts at 10am on Christmas morning. Then he said, "I cannot possibly wait THAT long."

Then there was the sorting and rearranging of the presents which I do believe was to actually count gifts. They even determined which gift they would open first. There were daily pleas to "Please, please, Can we open Just One gift early?"

Mom had a little subterfuge herself. I bought my kids one big present. I ordered it and had it shipped to my parents house so they never even saw a box come here. That was my first trick. Then to further create more fun, I came up with the idea of a Hide-and-Seek with clues and hidden gifts. Each child got one present to open with a clue inside and then had to go find the next present and bring it to the next kid on down to Peanut who had to ask his Aunts if they had the special gift. What amused me was that BB looked kind of annoyed during the game but then once he saw the gift which was a Playstation 2 with Lego Batman. He then kind of latched on to the box and did not let it out of his sight the rest of the gift opening time. Later on he told me how much fun it was to play Hide-and-Seek.

I think I succeeded in creating a memory.

So, today, as we sit in the aftermath of Christmas with wrapping paper shrapnel and cookie crumbs, my kids are busy building new creations out of legos and then playing games on their new game system.

BB then said to me, "Do you think that for next Christmas, which is in 364 days, we could get a Wii?"

Correction: BB informed me that it is Peanut who is asking for the Wii. However, I am pretty sure he is asking for it too!