Presents!
My earliest memory of opening Christmas presents came when I was about six-years-old. After fighting to fall asleep on Christmas Eve, I woke up early on Christmas morning, excited to finally discover what was in those packages that had been sitting under the tree for what felt like months. I walked into the living room to find Santa had stopped by overnight, and filled my stocking with candy and presents. I tore into the packages and found enough toys to keep me entertained well into the next week.
The observant readers have noticed a key ingredient missing from my Christmas memory: Parents. My parents were still asleep when I stumbled onto the cache, and my six years worth of wisdom didn’t include the fact parents like to watch their children open presents. Even if I’d wanted to wait for my parents, I don’t think I would’ve made it. I woke up about 2am, and would’ve gone nuts without the Transformer “Jazz” to play with for six hours until my parents woke up.
From my memory, I figure I’ve got about three, maybe four years before Abbie begins burning Christmas memories into her permanent psyche. That’s good, because it gives me a couple more years to perfect this “gift giving” skill, because it doesn’t come naturally. If she were to remember and expect all future Christmas hauls to be like this one, she’d be disappointed in perpetuity.
With two previous Christmases under out belts, we approached this one like all the others by buying Abbie a fair number of toys. We did not account for the multiplication factor involving the twins, though. The twins were around last Christmas, but we didn’t actually buy much for them, just a couple ornaments so that one day, they could look back at their first Christmas, and say “we got a pretty good stash of toys compared to that first one.” We didn’t bother with toys for their first Christmas because, being a couple weeks shy of their original due date, they couldn’t do much more than drool on anything. Abbie had plenty of hand-me-down toys to share anyway, assuming she was ready to hand them down, which she was not.
This Christmas they could use toys, though, and we obliged by buying them toys. We had to be fair, and bought as many for each boy as we bought for Abbie, which works out to 15 toys total under the tree. Then grandparents did the same. Finally, great-grandparents piled on a few goodies just to see what happens.
The result is our children now have every commercially available toy safety rated for children under the age of three, and a couple for ages three and up. I know they’ve run out of baby and toddler toys to receive because they opened a duplicate toy. We’ll return one for store credit, and possibly use it next Christmas when the store has something new that our children don’t have yet, assuming they can make it through the glut of birthday presents. They had so many presents, they grew bored before they could finish opening them, something I don’t remember experiencing until Ellie opened a package containing our fifth place setting of the morning while opening wedding presents.
We’ve learned a few lessons. First, just act like we’re buying presents for one child because everyone will play with every toy anyway. Second, set strict spending limits for total Christmas expenditures or else the house will be overrun by tiny one-piece figurines and about three twist-ties per new figure. Third, big group presents are good because they hit that expenditure limit quickly, take up a manageable amount of space, and create one present to wrap and open.
Speaking of big gifts, I’ll leave you with a picture of everyone enjoying their biggest gift: A bouncy house:
It says it’s for ages 3 & up, but we figure as long as we’re violating one safety rule by using it indoors, it doesn’t matter if we violate another.
The observant readers have noticed a key ingredient missing from my Christmas memory: Parents. My parents were still asleep when I stumbled onto the cache, and my six years worth of wisdom didn’t include the fact parents like to watch their children open presents. Even if I’d wanted to wait for my parents, I don’t think I would’ve made it. I woke up about 2am, and would’ve gone nuts without the Transformer “Jazz” to play with for six hours until my parents woke up.
From my memory, I figure I’ve got about three, maybe four years before Abbie begins burning Christmas memories into her permanent psyche. That’s good, because it gives me a couple more years to perfect this “gift giving” skill, because it doesn’t come naturally. If she were to remember and expect all future Christmas hauls to be like this one, she’d be disappointed in perpetuity.
With two previous Christmases under out belts, we approached this one like all the others by buying Abbie a fair number of toys. We did not account for the multiplication factor involving the twins, though. The twins were around last Christmas, but we didn’t actually buy much for them, just a couple ornaments so that one day, they could look back at their first Christmas, and say “we got a pretty good stash of toys compared to that first one.” We didn’t bother with toys for their first Christmas because, being a couple weeks shy of their original due date, they couldn’t do much more than drool on anything. Abbie had plenty of hand-me-down toys to share anyway, assuming she was ready to hand them down, which she was not.
This Christmas they could use toys, though, and we obliged by buying them toys. We had to be fair, and bought as many for each boy as we bought for Abbie, which works out to 15 toys total under the tree. Then grandparents did the same. Finally, great-grandparents piled on a few goodies just to see what happens.
The result is our children now have every commercially available toy safety rated for children under the age of three, and a couple for ages three and up. I know they’ve run out of baby and toddler toys to receive because they opened a duplicate toy. We’ll return one for store credit, and possibly use it next Christmas when the store has something new that our children don’t have yet, assuming they can make it through the glut of birthday presents. They had so many presents, they grew bored before they could finish opening them, something I don’t remember experiencing until Ellie opened a package containing our fifth place setting of the morning while opening wedding presents.
We’ve learned a few lessons. First, just act like we’re buying presents for one child because everyone will play with every toy anyway. Second, set strict spending limits for total Christmas expenditures or else the house will be overrun by tiny one-piece figurines and about three twist-ties per new figure. Third, big group presents are good because they hit that expenditure limit quickly, take up a manageable amount of space, and create one present to wrap and open.
Speaking of big gifts, I’ll leave you with a picture of everyone enjoying their biggest gift: A bouncy house:
It says it’s for ages 3 & up, but we figure as long as we’re violating one safety rule by using it indoors, it doesn’t matter if we violate another.
posted by Matt at
11:53 PM
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