Day 450 - Christmas Exchange

Today was our annual gift exchange with our friends Paul & Michelle and Bernard & Joyce. Paul & Michelle have a three year old boy, Jared, and Bernard & Joyce have an 18 month year old girl, Abby.

I made a couple of observations during today's festivities. First of all, it is very difficult to get a good shot of four kids in front of a Christmas tree. Even with the obnoxious ability of digital cameras to take hundreds of pictures of one pose, the shot you see was the best one we were able to get. Eventually, you just settle for the most amount of face for each kid.

It's no wonder when I was a kid most of my holiday pictures were crap. With only 24 or 36 photos in a roll of film, how could you get a decent picture? But then again my parents had me wear a brown paper bag over my head most of time so during the holidays they would just draw a smiley face on it. Problem solved.

Secondly, although I feel our kids are growing into these little people before our eyes, I sometimes forget how young they still are. When it was time to open presents, Jared was the first child to open one up. He opened the gift we gave him which was a Radio Flyer scooter. He was pretty excited and said, "Thank you Uncle Scott and Auntie What Your Name."

Next up was Abby. She opened up her gift which was a shelf that held different number and letter puzzles. Although she didn't show the same amount of excitement as Jared, you could still tell she had fun opening up the present and she immediately started playing with her puzzles.

And now here comes Emma and Andrew. We placed their presents in front of them and told them to open it. They just stared at the box and stared at it like a vegan would look at a piece of meat ("What the hell do you want me to do with that?"). So we tore a little bit of the wrapping paper. That helped this sad situation and both of them began to rip the paper with glee. Maybe too much glee because they ran away with wrapping paper in their hands. Minutes later, we were able to get them to at least finish taking the wrapping paper off to see what presents they received.

I was a little embarrassed because our kids weren't able to enjoy opening presents like Jared and Abby. If Forrest Gump could run a shrimping empire, our kids should be able to open up a damn Christmas present. But I realized that our kids are still pretty young and have a lot of learning and growing to do.

I think as parents you go through these moments when you wish your kids would hurry up and grow up, but when they do you wish you could turn back time. Since our kids are only 14 months old, I haven't gotten to the point when I wish I could turn back time quite yet. I really don't need to reexperience sleep deprivation, spit up, and poop on my clothing. Lisa does those things to me more than enough.