Julia has been eagerly anticipating Christmas morning for about a month now, and woke up full of excitement and joy. Madeleine had no idea what was going on and didn't understand why her usual morning routine was being disturbed. They could not have acted in a more idiosyncratic fashion if they had tried.
JULIA: (coming into our bedroom) Merry Christmas!
ME: Merry Christmas! So, did you see if we got presents or not?
JULIA: We did! (looking a bit perturbed) Well, actually, Mama, I thought that maybe I wasn't SUPPOSED to look yet, so I, like, kind of covered my eyes when I walked by the living room.
ME: Oh, okay. We'll, let's go see if we got presents, then!
MADELEINE: (upon being carried downstairs from her crib) We going to watch a SHOW!
ME: No, we're going open presents!
MADELEINE: (bursting into tears) I wanna watch a SHOW!
ME: Today is Christmas, Madeleine! We're going to open our presents!
MADELEINE: (angrily) No! I don't want to open PRESENTS!
Lucky for Julia, there were presents aplenty under the tree
While she delightedly helped me separate the gifts into piles according to their recipients, she surprised me by showing the spirit of giving was more important to her than receiving. She actually waited to delve into her own pile until she presented her sister with the Madeleine Wow Car that she had picked out:
Once the unwrapping was under way, Julia tore through each present, kindly stopping to thank Ethan and I for the gifts that were labeled from us. Madeleine, on the other hand, was still stuck on her Wow! Car, refusing any other gift passed her way and repeatedly, urgently asking Ethan to take it out of the box for her. While we managed to coax her into opening a few other gifts, it was the same story with each; she had absolutely no interest in moving onto the next gift, and instead just wanted to play with whatever she had most recently opened. Julia and I finally resorted to opening the rest of her gifts for her because at the rate she was going, we were truly going to be celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas.
Julia's favorite gift of all were the American Girl Bitty twins, which I got for her after she drooled over them in the American Girl catalogue we received. In fact, she has already given them names: May and Elina, and May is the younger of the twins. Madeleine also got an American Girl Bitty doll, one of their newborn babies, but she dropped it on its head when I tried to give it to her while she was absorbed with another toy.
May and Elina
After Julia moved all her new gifts up to her room, stopping to say, "Mama, thank you for all the presents you gave me," Ethan and I decided to put on one of the brand new DVDs the girls had unwrapped so that we could have a quiet, relaxing breakfast together. The girls are currently happily absorbed in "Barbie: Mermadia," and Madeleine is of course watching it while sitting in a box:
Happy Holidays to all!
No comments:
Post a Comment