At 2am, there was a knock on the door from two kids who had only fell asleep two hours before. They were declaring that Santa had come – it was time to open presents.
Yes, we made them go back to bed. It was funny listening to their comments on the way back upstairs – comments like “Did you see what we poking out of our stockings?? I think I saw what he left for us. Oh, man!”
Because Garbanzo told them he did not want to see them for at least 5 more hours, we were not too surprised when we got up to find they were upstairs debating whether or not 5 hours had passed.
They came down, and as is tradition, they tackled the stockings first as Garbanzo and I got coffee. We had gotten to bed late thanks to their inability to sleep from all of the excitement. We came back to the living room with the girls surrounded by their loot from their stockings. Oh, and a shit load of ash from the fireplace. Damn Santa made such a mess getting out of the fireplace!
We got the ash cleaned up, and they opened their Santa present. (Santa in our house gives one big present for each kid.) Then we tackled all of the rest of the presents which, in essence, destroyed the living room.
After Garbanzo and I wrestled free the toys (M had a great idea about tracking down and punching the packaging designers for these toys – and I want in on it), we sat back in hopes of having some quiet time. Instead, I assembled a Lego kit. Garbanzo put together these helmets that were not supposed to require assembly.
I made brunch in the midst of it all – and another cup of coffee. Their hyper-ness combined with my lack of sleep was making me crash. We finally sent them outside for a while to run it off. Garbanzo and I decided to take advantage of the alone time and retired to the bedroom where I was hit with the largest sinus migraine I have had in a while. It didn’t totally disrupt our activities, but it did screw with the rest of the afternoon. (I still have it as I type this. I’m hoping sleep will make it go away for good. Fucking allergies!!)
The girls came back inside when I declared quiet time. I knew they had had very little sleep – and we all needed a time out from each other. The girls went upstairs, and we relaxed.
Like waiting for Santa, the “quiet time” was short lived. They were back to bouncing off of the walls and fighting again. The dogs gave us this look like we should do something to make them stop. Finally, they went and hid in the backroom. We ate dinner – let them play one of their four new Wii games – and finally declared it time for bed at 9pm.
Indigo complained tonight that her stomach hurt – but she wanted dessert. Thursday, she and DJ ate on the car ride back from Central Oregon an entire bag of M&Ms (big bag), a bag of Oregos, cheese and crackers, and who knows how much juice. Christmas Day, Indigo tried to repeat the process. Gee, kid, why does your stomach hurt? It’s a mystery!
All in all it was a good day. We will be recovering from it the next few days I’m sure. But then again, there is another Lego kit to be built. And, more Wii games to play, and some science stuff to explore. Maybe we won’t have time to recover yet…..
Somehow, we’ve successfully trained our kids to let us sleep to a “normal” time on Christmas morning, which translated to 6:45 this year. We send them to get the stockings and rejoin us in our bedroom, *then* we’ll get up.
I was tweeting with M yesterday about the evil packaging people- I want in on the beating!
We did have a lot of fun yesterday and we are glad you did too.
2am? We would have gone batshit crazy if the kids woke us up at 2am.
I don’t think you can stop kids from eating a lot of junk when it’s around, that’s like Dracula guarding the blood bank.