Christmas Morning
We woke with the alarm clock at 7am, when we would normally fall out of bed to begin the weekday routine of getting the children ready for school, making breakfasts, packed lunches, and fighting a running battle through the house. Except today was Christmas Day. We expected the children to have either woken us several hours previously, or to have erupted on the first sound from the alarm.
I leaned across the bed and switched the alarm off. We listened. Silence. I rolled over to give my other half a hug, and we whispered disbelievingly that the children had slept through until a vaguely sensible hour.
At 7:15 the first sounds of movement happened in the darkened bedrooms across the landing, followed by an explosion from Miss 9.“HE'S BEEN! HE'S BEEN! I'VE GOT AN ANNA DRESS!” (she did indeed have an Anna Dress with a hooped skirt, hanging from her bunk bed).
We lay in bed with huge grins, listening to the discoveries in their Christmas stockings.“I'VE GOT LOOM BANDS!”“I'VE GOT LEGO!”“I'VE GOT SWEETS!”“I'VE GOT An orange ?“Twenty minutes later we were downstairs, bleary eyed, kettle on, preparing for the beginning of the real mayhem. We both grew up with those first few minutes on Christmas morning being absolute mayhemand have continued that tradition. The only thing we asked was that the kids didn't open the three big boxes under the table until they had opened everything else (which, it turned out was quite a lot of random stuffwe didn't really have time to go Christmas shopping in any kind of organised way this year, so bought bits and pieces over the last month. It turns out we bought way more than we thought we had).
After opening the mountain of pyjamas, socks, books, movies, music, craft kits, board games, and so on, we were down to the three mysterious boxes. I wish I had been aiming the camera at our eldest at the moment she realised.
A week ago I had been walking home from town with her. I had asked he what she wanted for Christmas for the umpteenth time. She had given us no clues.“A computer of my own?“before I could answer, she carried on ” only joking the younger sisters fist pumped the air, and shouted “YESSSS” while their big sister still sat there, staring at the box disbelievingly.