We all know the image of Christmas morning portrayed in movies and television.? Snow gently falling on the rooftop while you peacefully wake to the aromas of breakfast and coffee.? The innocence of pajama clad children opening presents.? Blah, blah, blah.? Here’s how it went in my house this year.
We were jarred from our sleep by the not so soothing sounds of Thing 3 standing in his crib and crying at the top of his lungs.? It was 4:50 am.
Hoping to keep the others sleeping longer, Suburban Mommy rushed to the crib to try to contain the noise.? But the genie was already out of the bottle, so to speak.
Thing 1 was the next to wake up.? He is already a morning person, full of energy the second he gets out of bed.? He is also five years old, and fully aware of what awaits on Christmas morning, so you can imagine the energy as he ran downstairs this morning.? It was 4:58 am.
Thing 2 is more of a night owl, like me.? He likes to wake slowly, lay in bed for a while, watching tv.? Also like me, he can sometimes be a bit grumpy slow to wake up.? On this morning, though, he came right out of his room to head downstairs.? As soon as he looked outside, a panic came into his three year old mind.
“Is today Christmas, daddy?”
“Yes”
“But it’s not snowing!”? [starts to cry]? “It’s supposed to snow on Christmas.? It’s never going to be Christmas!”
I suppose I can’t blame him since all the holiday shows we’ve been watching for the last month – Rudolph, Frosty, Shrek the Halls – always have it snow on Christmas.
It was 5:05 am.
We were able to hold them off from opening presents until around 6 o’clock, but the excitement was too great.? Since we said we couldn’t open presents until everyone was awake (Suburban Uncle was still sleeping in the basement), Thing 1 and Thing 2 made sure that wasn’t a problem anymore by storming in to his room and getting him up.? No wonder we don’t get house guests more often.
They made such quick work of tearing off wrapping paper that we had opened all the presents by 6:45.? I’m thinking it must be a Christmas record – all presents unwrapped before sunrise.? Which was probably about the time when others, somewhere, were waking to the peaceful scene of falling snow.
Then, we set another record shortly after the presents were all opened – the earliest fight over a new toy.? It was 7:07 am.
Single minded determination can be a good quality, and lead to some amazing accomplishments.? It took Albert Einstein eight years to develop his theory of relativity.? Michael Phelps trained for a decade on his way to winning 14 gold medals. These men had a single focus, suffering setbacks along the way, but persisting until they got to the finish line.