Christmas

Jack woke up at 5:40. Too early. Despite his protests, I put him back to bed.

We woke up around 7, and he was still asleep. Made coffee, checked the email, finally said, well, guess I'll start making noise. Eventually he woke up. Probably the last Christmas morning he'll sleep past 7, so I should have enjoyed it while I could.

I gave Mommy the heads up to get the video camera rolling and we headed downstairs. Went into the living room, where presents in special Santa Claus wrapping paper were displayed. Also his stocking, overflowing with a Santa toy and a Rudolph toy sticking out the top. "Santa came!" we said excitedly. Jack: "Yeah!" But it wasn't quite an exclamation point. It was more of a, well, yeah, OF COURSE Santa came, Daddy.

I'd have to check the video tape, but I'm assuming he went for the stocking first. Maybe he went for one of the wrapped Santa gifts. Tough to say. He pulled out the stuffed toys, and there was much happiness. He pulled out the Harold the Helicopter toy from "Thomas the Tank Engine." It was in a little cardboard box with with Harold's picture on it. "What's that, Jack?" We asked. "What did you get?" He looked at it, then literally tossed it over his shoulder with disdain. "This is just a box," he said. And we said, "No! Look inside it!" He goes over to it and gives it another look. "Oh, it's Harold!" He's about to move on to another present when we say, no, it's not just a picture! He finally opens it, with help. "OH, it's Harold the Helicopter!"

He opened a book. Might have been "Chicka Chicka 1 2 3." Takes a look at it. Then: "Read it, Mommy." The next 5 minutes are spent with Emily reading the book to him. Opens another book. "Read it to me, Mommy." Emily reads the book to him.

As Emily noted, the cool thing about this Christmas was it was the first one where he was actually fully into opening his own presents, enjoying each thing, moving on to another one ("I want to open another present now"), and enjoying it.

We opened his Lincoln Logs from Nana and Baba. Spent a while building a house. "This is Santa's house," he said when it was done, putting the little Santa figure I'd put in his stocking by it. Then he put the toy digger truck we'd given him by it. "Santa's digger," he explained.

It's a few days later now, and stuff fades. I know it was all pretty great.

A favorite memory of mine involves the entire history of this big blue dinosaur, by Imaginext. He mentioned wanting it about a week before Christmas ("I want my big blue dinosaur"), and we had no idea what he was talking about. Turns out he'd seen it while out with Grandpa, so we called him up, and he said, yes, I know what it is. So, he shows up one day before Christmas with the dinosaur. I sort of assumed something the size of, I dunno, a loaf of bread at most. The thing was half the size of Jack. And when you pushed a button on its tail, its eyes lit up, head turned around, it make a roaring noise, its whole neck twisted. It wasn't even in an actual box, just kind of half on a cardboard platform.

So I wrapped this enormous thing in a huge box, and toward the end on Christmas, I gave it to Jack. He got the paper off, but was left with the box. I told him to have Grandpa help him. They got the box open, and Jack's eyes get wide, "Ohhhhhhhhh" (he kind of draws in his breath in a big way, I don't know if "Oh" is really appropriate, but it's the best approximation) "My blue dinosaur!"

After that I got distracted, but I looked over 5 or 10 minutes later and Grandpa was still trying to get the dinosaur off his cardboard platform. They make these toys basically impossible to get free of the packaging, I guess so parents get to incur hand injuries while opening them, or maybe damage the toys so they'll have to buy more. Anyway, they finally got it out, and I saw Jack and Lyndsay playing with it. They were kneeling there, and the dinosaur was standing between it. Jack pressed its tail, and its eyes lit up, its head reared around, and it sort of glared at Jack. He was smiling and laughing, but also backing away so quickly it looked like he was slipping on ice. Grandpa was laughing. The dinosaur? Still roaring.

It was great.