Christmas '09: Christmas morning

Christmas morning was a little anti-climactic this year. It seems like whenever we go to Eldo, Alex tends to get congested and ends up with a cough and runny nose. It's most likely allergies as opposed to a cold, but whatever the case, he is miserable and crabby and doesn't sleep well.

So he woke up Christmas morning with snot pouring out of his face - certainly the image I want to wake up to on the morn of Christ's b-day - and was a bit out of sorts. Not that I can blame him, poor pitiful thing. The rest of the family had gathered in the living room with video cameras and eager smiles, and I was supposed to usher him down the hallway and into the living room, where he was supposed to jump up and down and pee himself with excitement over the giant piles of presents that Santa had brought him. Instead, he stood in the hall and said, "I don't want to, I scared". Apparently he thought that Santa himself was going to be standing in the living room and wasn't too keen on Santa seeing him snot-nosed.

Eventually, we convinced him that Santa had brought his presents, ate his cookies, and left to deliver toys to other kids. The first thing he saw when he finally came into the room was the battery-powered train making its way around a track in front of the tree...and that's pretty much the last thing he saw that morning. He was so enamored by that train that he really didn't care about the towering piles of presents waiting to be opened. It was like pulling teeth trying to get him to open anything else, so the rest of us ended up opening his presents for him and shoving them in his face, saying things like, "Look Alex!! You love this!! Isn't this so much fun!!???"

We did get him to open a few things, like a giant Magnadoodle, a Thomas coloring book from B and Grampa, and the Smart Cycle we got him as his "big gift" this year. He mostly played with his train that morning, although he has since fallen in love with his Smart Cycle, a story which will probably earn a blogpost of its own.

That pretty much covers Christmas morning. I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but it was so hard not to be disappointed when I had such high expectations for how Alex would react to all of the great things his family had thoughtfully picked out and bought and wrapped just for him. And I hate that my most vivid memory of that morning was Alex being a whiny, fussy, crabby-patty with snot running down his face when I should be focusing on his excitement when he saw that Santa had eaten his cookies, and the shock on his face when he saw that train chugging around the track.

Anyway, that morning was just one small hitch in what had been a great week, and there were still more good times to be had. We had another Christmas celebration that evening - more info on that to come in the next post.