It's clear that with three children Christmas morning can be simply described with 3 short words, joyful, exciting, and madness. Our morning started out with Elliot racing into our room to report Santa's obvious arrival and then back and forth with descriptions of what was under the tree, as well as his best guesses as to what was peeking out of the stockings. Owen and Maeve were up shortly after, with no chance of sleeping through the excitement!
It was thrilling as we began to dip into the stockings pulling out toys and trinkets. I was truely enjoying myself, until we started dispersing presents from under the tree. Suddenly it was like a starting gun had gone off in the living room and there was a frenzy of activity. Elliot was opening gifts at an alarming speed and I could barely keep my eyes on anything the kids were opening before they quickly moved on to the next item. All of this after a deliberate effort to keep things "reasonable" this year. We really didn't go crazy with gifts but apparently that doesn't matter. I could feel my anxiety rise as the calm magical feeling of the morning quickly turned into a mad house.
Well, who can blame them. It was Christmas after all, and we had done our fair job of building them up this very moment. Eventually I let go of my strong desire to control the occasional and finally relaxed into the chaos. Chaos it was, but I cant imagine a better way to have spent the morning!
After all the gifts were open we spent the rest of the day playing with the new toys and preparing for dinner with our friends. Dennis made roasted pepper and mushroom lasagna with his own homemade noodles. It was amazing! In fact the only thing that disturbed the mood of the meal was the interruption of one child who had an accident, and one who after getting her little hands on a Christmas lifesaver choked on a small piece and threw up all over herself. Oh well, what would Christmas be if it weren't for both the merriment and wild energy of children!
