Christmas Memories

The day is finally here. CHRISTMAS EVE!!!!! The kids are bouncing with excitement. I am excited that they are excited.

Monday night they were talking about how tomorrow (Tuesday) they could say it was the day before Christmas Eve. So yesterday morning, they stumble out of bed, sleepy eyed, but only for a couple of minutes. Then they seemed to wake fully and start with the today is the day before Christmas Eve chant. I can hardly wait for them to wake this morning, knowing that the excitement will be 10 times more intense.

Chase and Mackenzie are planning the sleeping arrangements for the tonight. What time will they go to bed, when they will get up, who will wake who up...

In fact, Chase has set the alarm on his cell phone to wake him up at 3am. Note to self, I have to remember to sneak that away from him and cut that off.

Every Christmas I think back on two memories from my childhood, one not so good and the other is probably one of my favorite memories of my brother and I.

Not so good...My mom and my dad, when we were all together, would let us get up whenever we woke, reasonably, anytime after 3am would be a fair guess. It was always so fun for us. We would get up, open presents, then most of the time we would all curl up on the living room floor and go back to sleep. I would always curl up with my new doll, since I got one every year!!! (I loved dolls so much.)

After my mom and dad separated, our Christmas mornings were traded, one year with mom, the next with dad. The first year we were at dad's, my new step-mother was listening to me and the excitement that I was bounding with. When I got the part of getting up anytime after 3, she burst my bubble so bad. She looked at me, her smile gone, and told me, "OH NO, you will not get up until after 7." I was totally crushed. I almost could care less about Christmas that year after that moment. I am not sure what happened between mom and dad, but that was our last Christmas morning there. (I loved my step-mother very much, this was just a bump in the road.)

My favorite memory...and it is a favorite, possibly one of my favorite childhood memories. Once my mom and dad had separated, and it was just mom, Tim, and myself nothing changed about the early waking. But the waking happened like this:

Mom and I shared a room. I had a small bed on one side of the room and she had her bed on the other. My brother had his own room. Every year, I would be sleeping, dreaming of sugar plums, when someone would grab my toe. I would look up, and there would be my Tim. He would motion for me to go wake Mom. So, I would. Do you know how heavy an adults leg weighs? Well I do. I do because she would ALWAYS have me lie down beside her, and she would wrap her arm and leg over me and begin rocking back and forth, trying to get me to go back to sleep. She would doze off, but I would be trapped. All the while, Tim keeps coming to the door and making motions for me to wake her up. Every time I would try, she would say, "Shhhh, go back to sleep honey." This would go on for maybe an hour before she would give in.

When she gave in, she would tell me to go wake Tim. Now we all know he has orchestrated this whole scheme. I would go into his room, and "wake" him. EXCEPT, he would pretend to be sleeping and wake up grouchy and disrupted that I would be waking him at a God awful time of morning. He would do the big brother bashing the little sister act. EVERY YEAR we did this. He always denied it, and what proof did I have? I was the little girl who was way more (or expressed way more) excitement about Christmas than he had. UG.

This continued on year after year. The funniest one for me now is the Christmas that he had first been married. He and my sister in law spent the night at our house. Yes, he did the same thing early in the morning. When I ran around waking everyone, he pretended to be sleeping. My sister in law was in shock that we were up so early, she did not "wake" for a good 30 minutes. Do you think anyone would believe the younger sister, when Tim was a married man and all? Well, let me tell you, NO NO NO.

To this day when this comes up, Tim will grin but still will not confess. I think by the time we were grown, Mom and D2 knew but played along.

I fully expect to be up in the wee hours of the morning. My husband never really did big Christmas' as a child so this is all foreign to him. He grumbles and says crazy stuff like, "I cannot believe..." and that is where I stop him. I like getting up, it is what we do, and I will never be my step-mother and squash that for the kids. Sooner than we can imagine, Sheldon and I will be waking up alone on Christmas morning, we better savor every part of the fun now. If they want to get up at 3, we get up at 3. I mean really, they have been excited about this day for 364 days!!!

Merry Christmas to all, and I hope you too get woken up at the crack of dawn. Have fun.