Due to various reasons:
*My lack of being prepared ahead of time
*My family of origin's tradition of waiting until Christmas Eve (after the kids are in bed) to put out the gifts
*My kids' former belief in Santa (they found out last year)
We have waited, for the most part, until Christmas Eve to put out any presents. Well, for some reason (partly because they know about Santa), this year, I decided to put out presents as we wrap them or as they got sent to us. So for weeks now there have been presents under our tree and slowly accumulating more. After the first few were there BR comes to me and asks if they can open their presents. I tell him that we are going to wait for Christmas just like we always do and he proceeds to get all teary eyed, with the trembling lip and all. Similarly, MC has spent hours looking at the presents, shaking the presents, speculating which ones are legos for BR (which she's determined to be most of them, even the ones that are clothes or books), wondering which presents are hers (we don't have labels on most of our presents) and bemoaning the fact that she wishes they could open them now or that Christmas would hurry up. These behaviors, which were very unexpected (I somehow forgot that we'd never done it this way before and expected my kids to think it completely normal), has sparked conversations about different traditions/practices. My MIL mentioned how she never put names on her presents either and how she figured it added to the excitement, wonder and anticipation for her kids. We decided to find out what ML thought of it when he was a kid. He said it was pure torture.
2 comments:
The torture was when Mom forgot which present belonged to whom and sometimes had the wrong person open it. lol
That said, I don't put labels on mine either, but I do coordinate the wrapping paper to the Christmas pin each kid has on their stocking. So I guess that is a label...
Sorry Rob!
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