We Couldn't Wait!

This afternoon, about half an hour before we'd said we would start getting dressed for Christmas Eve dinner with Shrike's family, I told Shrike, "I know it's too late to do anything about it this year, but I want to discuss our gift-opening schedule. I don't like the idea of opening everything on Christmas Day, and lumping 'people presents' in with the ones from Santa."

(Growing up, we opened everything from each other on Christmas Eve, and then the next day was all about Santa and the big dinner. As it should be, of course.)

So, she said, "Okay, we can talk about it. Let's get her opinion. Peeper, do you want to open your presents from Mommy and Mama tomorrow or now?"

Well, as you can imagine, Peeper said, "Now!"

We didn't have time to do them all, so we decided to just let her open a couple, and to go ahead and let Shrike open her gifts from the Anonyparents (she's not going to Texas with us, so they sent hers here - by the way, she loves them all, thanks!).

First, she opened a cell phone from one of Shrike's work friends, then some butterfly wings that Shrike found a few weeks ago - these were a HUGE hit - and a couple of dollar-aisle puzzles, which she also really enjoyed, although she'll need a bit of practice before she can solve them.

Each time she opened one, she was happy to play with it for quite a while. I'm thinking that next year, maybe we'll just make the gifts from us an all-day-buffet sort of thing. Open one, play for half an hour, open another . . . .