Christmas morning and what mom learned

I was sewing felt food right up until about 10:30pm on Christmas Eve, so Santa visited shortly thereafter. We (I) decided that Santa was going to have a minimal appearance at our house. He'll leave 1 present per child, a family game, a family DVD, possibly another family present and stockings.And our stockings were going to be mostly "semi-healthy" things we don't normally have with a little bit of candy. We had freeze dried fruit, fruit leathers, Welch's fruit snacks, Quaker granola bars, peanuts, whoppers and some wrapped chocolate candies. I'm glad I had other stuff besides straight up candy. I feel like our household is already on sugar overload.

This is them first seeing Christmas morning. It's not super exciting, and it's a little long. I don't think we have one video of Walter during present opening from this first moment on without some sort of food in his hand.

Untitled from Celia Brasfield on Vimeo.



Dean didn't really seem to "get" the whole Santa thing until about two weeks before Christmas when kids were talking about what they wanted at preschool.  Once he figured out that he could ask Santa for anything he could possibly want, his list went from a green toy garbage truck to: a garbage truck, a fishing pole, a really big motorcycle (and after I told him he couldn't drive a real motorcycle, he changed it to "a really big toy motorcycle"), a drill like dad's, guns, and anything that caught his fancy while we were at the store.

Since we bought the nice play set this summer and we're changing out basically all of the flooring in our house right now, we were pretty minimal in our Christmas. On the Sunday before Christmas I pulled out all our gifts thinking I was done, only to realize that Walter only had 3 gifts, one we got for free that was going to be his Santa gift, a set of books from a yard sale, and a book from his grandparents. Dean's looked sparse, but a little better. So I set out to find Walter a few more presents.

On Christmas morning Dean didn't want to come out of his room because he was still a little scared he was going to scare Santa away and he'd take the presents.  Once he came out he seemed happy enough with the presents. He got the dump truck from Santa.  Walter got a rocking horse from Santa. There was a Curious George DVD, a mini basketball (for both boys), a game of memory, and stockings.  So far things were going well, though he wasn't crazy excited yet.  Matt pointed out the eaten cookies and milk and carrots. He was curious why Santa left a half eaten cook and was also a little annoyed because we gave Santa the last of our ginger cookies so there weren't any left for him.

He was happy to unwrap presents, though he seemed a little annoyed at  opening clothes. Like, "Seriously? Next present please."  He enjoyed  opening his presents and helping Walt open his. The down hill part of  Christmas came when Walt opened up one of the  last minute presents  from mom and dad, the guitar. When I bought the guitar, I knew that  Dean would want it, but I knew Walt would like it and he had fewer  presents. I should have gotten two. They both had fun playing with it and Dean was pretty decent about waiting till Walter was "done" playing with it before he rushed in to play.  Walt's not too, too possessive about his things yet. At one point Dean tried trading a shirt he got for the guitar. By the time the felt  food were opened, Dean was too distracted by the guitar, though Walt  gave it a token glance.  Dean basically  only played with the guitar all  day, totally rocking out rock star  style. Wait, I take that back. He  did have some rousing games of Hi-ho  Cherry-o and zingo with Matt also.  When I asked Dean if he liked his presents, he said, "no."  When we  asked what his favorite present was he said, "not any any toy."  Then he  asked if Santa was coming back and if we could ask him for a guitar  that looks like the Robot Parade guitar (like Walt's) and a big motorcycle (he got a small toy motorcycle in his stocking). By the end of the day he was claiming the guitar as his own.

  This is the video where Dean tries to trade one of his shirts for the guitar. =)

Trading the shirt for the guitar from Celia Brasfield on Vimeo.

So, what I learned: open "less exciting" presents at the first and give at least one "exciting" present to each child. Dean technically had more gifts, but it didn't seem like it since his were things like puzzles and books and shirts. He didn't have anything big or exciting or flashy. Even the garbage truck we got him was pretty little compared to the 3 presents Walt got. I had actually gotten him a toy drill, but it was the last one at the store and when I got home, Matt realized the trigger was broken, so that didn't make it to Christmas. The one gun he got was from the dollar store, so it didn't have any cool sounds or effects or anything, and I have to help him use it since it's so hard to pull the dart shooting mechanism back.  Ah well. At least he's little enough he probably won't be scarred by the memory, and he has seemed to have fun playing with his toys and books since then. (As a side note, we found out yesterday that Dean has strep throat, so I think that may have affected his excitement and general mood since I'm pretty sure it started bothering him the Wed. before Christmas. He kept saying his tummy hurt, so I thought it was candy, but he told me that every day for a week before I figured I ought to check it out.)

Walter loved everything. He loved eating a pink snowball out of his stocking first thing in the morning. He loved all of his presents. He loved all of Dean's presents. He really loved the toothbrush in the stocking. They have been playing with the little second hand Doug and Melissa stove top and felt food after the initial excitement of the popper and guitar wore off.

I got Matt a new really nice mouse pad, a pull up bar, and a cd. He got me a pedicure certificate to a nice salon/spa downtown and a fuel belt for running.

As for our Christmas breakfast, I made bacon and biscuits, which Dean loved and Walt didn't touch since he was too busy eating half his stocking. I actually had a bowl of large shredded wheat biscuits which was the traditional Christmas breakfast at my house growing up.  For our "big" Christmas dinner we had ham, party potatoes, Martinelli's, and green beans.