Christmas Eve

And so the big night arrived and we knew we were going to start off the evening at a disadvantage because dinner wasn't going to be served until the time when the boys are usually getting ready for bed. We are clockwork schedule people around here for good reason. And that is because we have seen how badly things can fail for them and everyone around them when we are not on a schedule and we just "let things roll" (there is a reason they say "sh--" always rolls downhill).

So we put our heads down and pushed onward into the evening hoping for the best but expecting the worst, and doing everything in our power to appease our little men to help keep the evening going.

Christmas Eve at my family is not a small production. Every other year before the boys' arrival it did not matter how long the night lasted because we were grown-ups who didn't have (too much) trouble staying up late. But oh how that changes with little people once they are more than a few months old and do not just fall asleep anywhere, anytime.

We are amazed to say that we made it through more than half of the post-dinner festivities, until about 10:00pm (but not without major repercussions - the "sh--" rolled downhill and hit mommy right in the face that night and next day as a result), but still amazed we lasted as long as we did!

For their Christmas "act" this year for Santa, they took along their favorite wooden Melissa & Doug shapes puzzle (whose shapes have been affectionately chewed on because of all the time they have spent with it) and they showed Santa where the: circle, rectangle, square, triangle, oval, heart, star, and diamond were located. They knew how to say the names of the shapes too at that point, but a room of over 30 people and the scary Santa man was enough to keep them quiet. We were so surprised that they even held the shapes up when asked - I figured all of those people would be enough to freeze them in their tracks. Santa was mighty impressed and promised to (eventually) bring them some great new toys. :)

Their favorite things of the evening definitely included my grandparent's piano (I think that was their first exposure to a piano that wasn't plastic with only 5 huge keys) and the wooden toy tractors that my grandmother kept from when my (twin) aunt and uncle were small. We spent most of the post-dinner activities trying to keep Mason from ramming the tractor into his brother and into other people's shins, and Ethan spent almost the entire evening laying next to his tractor rolling it back and forth and back and forth mesmerized by it and it's ability to roll. I am certain that most everything on those tractors would be considered a huge hazard under today's rules for toys, but that's what made them even more fun! :)