Edamames In a Pod: Day 89 - Holidays with Kids

This past Sunday we had our Secret Santa exchange with our friends, Paul & Michelle and Bernard & Joyce. What was different about it this year is that we all had kids. Paul & Michelle have a 2.5 year old boy, Jared:

And Bernard & Joyce just had a baby girl earlier this year named Abby:

One thing I notice about get-togethers with friends once you have kids is that they become daytime affairs. We're all so into our "schedules" with our kids that god forbid we get our kids an hour late to bed. The books we read about raising twins say that's it's pretty important to create a schedule for your kids or else you might be up all hours of the day (which is pretty much the way it is already). Both Lisa and I aren't too obsessed with schedules yet (the kids aren't even three months yet), but we try to have a semblance of something. For instance, we always try to feed them and give them a bath around the same time every day. We also let them cry it out every Thursday when I watch 30 Rock and The Office, and Lisa watches Grey's Anatomy. You'd think after several months of this they'd realize to give up on the crying on Thursdays. Dummies.

Our friends met at our place Sunday morning for breakfast. We all exchanged presents with one another and with our kids. Jared is old enough to have some favorite things. For instance, he enjoys Little Einstein toys. He also enjoys Little Pasteur, Little Edison, and Little Richard. But for the rest of the kids, they're all just babies. We exchanged some clothes and baby toys, and that's about it.

Personally, I don't even know if we're going to buy our kids anything for Christmas (Thanks writer's strike!). I'm sure we'll end up buying a couple of small things just for show, but really, what more do they want from us? We're giving them a lifetime of servitude. We don't get upset when they poop, pee, and spit up on us. If anyone else did that to me, I'd give them a beating (that includes you too Grandma). Lisa pulls out her boobs every 3 hours to feed them, and because of that I can't even play with them anymore. I'm sure things will be different next Christmas when the kids will be more engaging, but as long as they're little pooping blobs we'll bypass the extravagant gift giving this year.

As for the gift exchange, it pretty much went off without a hitch except I figured out who my Secret Santa was as well as what gift I was going to get. You see, a few weeks ago Lisa sent out emails to tell everyone who their Secret Santa is. A week past, and Bernard and Joyce came to visit us one weekend. As we were all talking, Bernard had this conversation with me:

Bernard: Soooo...you have television shows on dvd, right?

Scott: err...yah.

By this point, I figured Bernard was my Secret Santa.

Bernard: Do you have the Seinfeld dvds?

Scott: err...yah.

By this point, I figured Bernard was going to buy me a Seinfeld dvd. I just hoped he wouldn't buy me a season I already have.

Bernard: Do you have Season 9 yet?

Scott: err...no.

Thankfully, Bernard asked me that question or else I was going to say, "I sure could use Season 9."

Now I could've been totally wrong about Bernard being my Secret Santa because I started thinking that maybe Joyce, his wife, could be my Secret Santa. Perhaps Joyce was using Bernard as the middleman to figure out what to buy me.

Cut to the middle of last week when I met Bernard for lunch. After we ate, Bernard wanted to walk to Best Buy to see if they had any Wiis in stock. Walking to Best Buy, we had this exchange:

Bernard: Do you mind if we go to Best Buy?

Scott: Of course not.

Bernard: Yah, I went there recently to buy your gift...

I looked at him. He was my Secret Santa.

Bernard: err...to buy a gift for you and Lisa.

That was as bad a cover-up as when I came home from a strip club and told Lisa I was just testing body lotion at Bath & Body Works.

The important thing was that we all had a good time, and we now know not to ask Bernard to do any investigative work for us.