Christmas Comes Early

Sunday morning I came down to find the Christmas tree was already up. David told us "No ornaments until Thanksgiving."

The day before, Megan, Cam and I had gone to the local bookstore, where we found carolers. Cam and Megan grabbed identical lift-the-flap Christmas books, and we sat down to peruse them. Megan was done with hers, and she said she was going to go put it back. It was a pretty far walk in the large bookstore, but I let her go on her own. "Come right back" I told her. A couple minutes later she came running up, book still in-hand.

"Mom, Mom, I couldn't find where to put the book, but guess who I did find??? SANTA CLAUS!"

"Really? Show me!" And Cam and I followed her to the front of the store. There he was, right near the registers. I'm not sure if Cam knew what Santa Claus was before, but when I pointed out the man in the red suit and long beard, he was very interested. He stared and smiled and waved.

We followed Santa back to the children's section, where Megan was invited to enter a coloring contest, which she took quite seriously. Cam and I hung out at the Thomas-the-Train table, eyeing Santa. I kept asking him if he wanted to go sit on Santa's lap, but the answer was always no. Finally, when we spotted a stuffed mouse dressed as Santa, I asked him "Do you want to show the mouse to Santa?" And he exclaimed "YES!"

So we headed over to Santa to show him the little mouse, and Cam said to him "Look! Mouse!" Santa agreed it was a mouse, and tried to get Cam to sit on his lap. No dice. He offered for me to sit on his lap, with Cam on mine. Call me crazy, but I'm not big on sitting on the laps of strange men, so I declined.

So we were in the Christmas spirit on Sunday, and Megan immediately wanted to make ornaments for the tree. It's amazing how long some construction paper, markers, string, scissors, and tape can occupy a five-year-old. In this case, from about 11:30a until about 7pm.

Monday she decided it was time to start putting "presents" under the tree. So she wrapped various items in coats, sweatshirts, blankets, etc, and placed a hand-printed "card" with a name on top. She can write "Mommy", "Megan", "Cam", "David". She asked me to pick a present for her, and was very excited after I placed the card on top. "It's more fun when you don't know what the present is!" she informed me. Her face fell a little when she opened it up and found Cameron's freshly-soiled diaper. But it was only a minute before she joined in as David and I couldn't stop giggling. My little girl developing the ability to laugh at herself... the best Christmas present she could give me!