Babies first [interactive] Christmas

This is the babies first Christmas — well, at least it’s the first Christmas where they’ve been able to participate in the fun. Last year they were still teeny tiny little things and had no idea what was going on. We had a lot of debate about how to handle opening presents; because they still nap in the afternoon and go to bed early, Christmas Eve posed a problem (church was at 4:30, so that split our awake window down the middle). 

Fortunately (or not), both babies took monster naps yesterday morning, and decided not to sleep in the afternoon. This allowed us to open a couple of presents with them before church. We wanted to have them open the presents from Ethan first — he sewed pillows for both of them (pretty much all by himself) out of their favorite elephant fabric and we didn’t want the pillows (and their reactions) to get lost in the excitement.

Ethan was too excited about it, and pretty much ended up opening the gifts for them. But Veronica caught on to the concept of pulling the tissue paper out of the bag pretty quickly — and that’s where we lost her. Like most kids her age, the tissue paper and gift bags were WAY more exciting than anything else. Colin, however, took one look at the pillows and dove face first on to one, snuggling it and wiggling with glee. 

Roni got into the tissue paper.

Colin loved the pillow.

The other gift we let them open last night was a pop up “house” and crawling tunnel I bought for them earlier in the year from Ikea. Again, Veronica enjoyed the wrapping paper, but Colin took one look at the house, and crawled right in. Then, when I got the tunnel out of the package and expanded … well, let’s just say Colin was in little boy heaven. 

He eventually crawled out long enough to grab one of the pillows Ethan made and drag it into the house with him. Then he (and Ethan) crawled in and out of that tunnel for another 15 minutes. They would have kept going, too, if we hadn’t needed to leave for church.

Veronica was a little afraid of it whole thing at first. I’m sure Ethan thrashing around in there didn’t make it seem any safer. But at the end of our 15 minutes of fun, she finally ventured inside and discovered the joy of crawling through. And after church, even though both babies were so tired they probably could have fallen over and slept, the minute they saw the tunnel at the top of the stairs, they perked up and started to play again. 

Good purchase, Mom.

By this morning, when they opened their stockings and the rest of their presents, they had this whole gift-giving/opening thing figured out.