We had a fabulous visit and a delicious supper with Peter's family at his parent's house in Mill Bay. Breaking with tradition, presents were opened before supper and all the gifts were given out and unwrapped en masse.
It was a cacophonous chaos of ripping paper and ceaseless chatter, with Sonja and Haven receiving a pile of loot so big that it took Peter several trips to get it all out to the truck.
At one point Sonja came up to me in the single moments she had to wait between gifts and said, "I want to open another one, Mama!" I had barely opened my mouth to answer when another gift was laid in front of her.
Time to pack up a bunch of her old toys to make room for all the new stuff. For real. Today I filled a big blue Rubbermaid container with stuffies and dolls. They will put stored in the attic and perhaps they'll make a reappearance at a later date, or perhaps they'll be given away. We'll see.
And thus begins the Post-Christmas Blahs, when there are no more presents left to open. I went through this as a kid year after year; as much as I loved the gifts I'd received, I was always somewhat sad that the build-up, the anticipation, the sheer excitement was all over for another whole year. Sounds ungrateful or even greedy, but it had more to do with the thrill of Christmas than the getting of things.
As I've aged and especially since I've had kids, the Post-Christmas Blahs have flipped to the giving more than the receiving; I look forward every year to the gifts I'm giving (as stressful as it can be to think of what gifts to give). For example, this year I was so excited to give Sonja her dollhouse. I imagined her reaction for weeks and it was everything I had hoped for, but now it's over and I've lost that feeling of anticipation that I enjoyed so much.
Good thing for me that Sonja's third birthday is less that two months away, and Haven turns a year old less than two months after that. I do love having something to look forward to.
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