Christmas Morning

I was so excited for Christmas morning this year!  At 5 Juliana knows what to expect and I love the look on her face when she walks into the living room each year.  This year was more dramatic then previous years.  We usually have presents piled under the tree, but we had everything hidden away – safe from the busy toddlers.  So Christmas morning was the first time she saw her presents.  For the boys this was their first Christmas to fully experience the magic of waking up to find presents to open and new toys to play with (at 8 months old, they weren’t able to participate much last year).

It was a wonderful morning starting with the boys sleeping in – I got to sleep until 7:30!  After changing their diapers we went into Juliana’s room together to wake her up – she popped up in bed and ran to the bathroom to brush her teeth so we could go downstairs.  She immediately ran over to the presents wrapped in Tinkerbell paper, found the big box and announced it must be her Barbie house (I bought that Barbie house before she asked for it).  Then she found her stocking presents and sat down to open those first before opening the big box and the rest of her presents.  She was thrilled with her pillow pet – one of the other presents that she specifically asked for this year.

The boys were not very interested in opening presents – but they loved playing with the wrapping paper.  Every once in a while they would open something and then run off to play.  Ruslan took several laps of the room with the vacuum as soon as it was open.  Once we convinced them to open the car ramp and shopping cart that we had pre-assembled, Ruslan ran off with the shopping cart and Wyatt investigated the car ramp.  Then they played together with the ramp – it is perfect because there is ramp on each side – slightly lessens the fighting – they can also stand or sit to play with it.  They got lots of cars from Nonni and more from Santa so there there are plenty to use on the cars ramps.  One of Wyatt’s favorite presents was his DoodlePro – he immediately started to draw.

Ruslan’s favorite thing about Christmas morning – playing with the box from the Barbie house of course.  Wyatt occasionally tossed a toy inside the box and then went back to draw or play with the cars.  Ruslan kept circling the box – running and sliding down it until the box started to get worn out and he was doing more falling and crying then sliding, but still hopping back on to try again.  We retired the box a few hours into the day and started filling it with smaller boxes as we opened the other presents.

The Barbie house took much longer to assemble than I had anticipated.  I put it together in the kitchen and eventually moved it to Juliana’s room.  She played with it and her other Barbie presnts the rest of the morning.