Christmas gifting

JED have been counting down to Christmas. They are so excited they are vibrating on the spot. And they are excited about it not because Christmas commemorates the birth of Jesus but because they get presents. All they can think about is presents. Presents for themselves.

In a bid to get them to think beyond themselves this Christmas, we asked them to think about how happy they would be on Christmas morning with all their presents and how they could help others feel the same way.  We also asked them who they could bless in the same way that they themselves were blessed.

The eventual decision was to bless those in our estate that helped keep the estate clean. We have lived in the area long enough for JED to know who they are and for them to know who JED are. How we were going to bless them, we were going to leave to JED. We only stipulated one thing. That they not to pick items that they, JED, didn't like or didn't think much about.

With money from their savings, we set them free in NTUC. They picked their favourite snacks. Potato chips, biscuits, snacks. When I gently suggested buying some useful items, they reminded me that it had to be things that they thought of as yummy. Eventually, they ended up with $75 worth of snacks, instant beverages and yummy food.

This morning, we brought them downstairs to give their gifts. 

Thank you cards.

Heaving the gift bags down.

Being very shy about wishing him a Merry Christmas.

They turned it into a hide and seek game, running around looking for the various cleaning crew. Though with everyone, they stopped short in front of them shy and blushing furiously. But once they had given the gift, they were all smiles and yelling their blessings and wishes and we went in search of the next person.

I asked Evan what he thought about the whole thing afterward and he said that it was nice to see people smile so widely. And it was nice to know that he could do that for others.

While they are still definitely more focussed on Christmas and its presents; I just threatened to cancel Christmas on account of them misbehaving and their stricken faces were comedic if I hadn't been annoyed, my Christmas wish is that this little gesture would be something they would remember and replicate into a tradition that they would carry on and possibly grow as they get older.

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Party by kids

Sometime in October, the twins came home announcing that they were going to have a Christmas party. It was one of their club activities. It was going to be on December 23 from 6.30pm to 830 pm and it was going to be a dance party.

I didn't think they were serious about it. After all, they are a bunch of 7-8 year olds. But in November, our helper got approached to make pizza for the party by Kate, the apparent head of the club. And I kept finding invitations written on scraps of paper to friends, inviting them to the party.

The few days before December 23 saw the twins disappearing regularly to Kate's house (down the corridor) to make decorations and Kate's mom set up a chat group to discuss food for the party. So it was truly happening.

I think they were more excited about this than they were about Christmas. It was, after all, they idea in the first place.

Decor
So, there was decoration. Bunting, tinsel and a Christmas stocking. None of the adults had foldable tables and chairs so we used side tables for food and a big ground sheet for the kids to sit on. It gave it a very refugee camp feel to it especially when there were more than 10 kids sitting on it, plates on the ground and eating. But no one seemed to care.

Entertainment
At 8 pm, there was to be a talent show. Unfortunately, the only one who performed, multiple times, was Jordan. No one else wanted to though Evan gamely tried to participate as well.

10 kids on the corridor make a whole lot of noise especially when the boys decide to have an impromptu light sabre battle. We were concerned the neighbours would call in the authorities on account of disturbance. A crotchety old lady did appear to glare at the kids.

 

So we stepped in and suggested sparklers and catching downstairs.  Sparklers are always a hit and they would have finished all my boxes had it not been Kate who rounded everyone upstairs for the aforementioned talent show at 8 pm. 

All in, they had a great time and most of the food got rapidly polished off. The kids had a great glow to them. I suspect it was partially because they were hot and sweaty and flushed with excitement but also because they had planned it from scratch and it went off, almost without a hitch. They did forget to find a kid they left hiding during a game of Hide and Seek and it was only because we were doing a head count that we realised the littlest was still missing.

But apart from that, we've got a couple of party planners on our hands.

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Christmas Necessities

Christmas is increasingly chaotic as JED get older and older. The older JED twins already know that Christmas is great and is filled with presents that they can open and lots of pretty new things. They were chuffed for days and by the time Christmas Eve rolled by, they were literally vibrating on the spot from all the excitement.

Even though they received gifts as early as a week before Christmas, I forbade them from opening them till Christmas. Note to self: That built suspense really great but it does accumulate A LOT to open come Christmas morning. And the twins knew that so first thing Christmas morning, taking note that they had gone to sleep at almost 11 pm on Christmas Eve, they shook me awake.

I dragged myself out of bed muttering something to myself about how Bill Watterson had it right in Calvin and Hobbes. Everything I remember reading in Calvin and Hobbes about his parents' reactions to him storming the house Christmas morning, was going through my head. 

Their excitement was certainly contagious and I woke up enough to participate and oooh and ahhh at their presents. Being there when they opened their presents meant that I had to also assemble what they got. As the present pile grew bigger and bigger, I realised that I was repeatedly using the same things to get the presents into work worthy conditions.

1. Philips Screwdriver- important instrument that opens up all the battery compartments for the blasted toys that require batteries.
2. Batteries (Mostly double As)- Toy companies must get a big kick back from Energizer and Duracell for making toys that require batteries. The attraction of the bright flashy lights that can cause seizures and the tinny, repetitive music that can wake the dead is just too great for the kids and they play it till the batteries go flat and we go broke buying new batteries. We have gone rechargeable but it still annoys me nonetheless because I have to go hunting for lost batteries and account for them in the various toys round the house.
3. Scissors- There is so much tape on the box to keep the toy down. And it is taped down in such a way that we can't use our fingers to break through it. I think it is a conspiracy to keep more workers in the production line.
4. Nimble fingers- The same people who figured out how to wire tie the blasted toys to the cardboard backing in the box are probably the same people who came up with the flexi-cuffs that cops use today or perhaps these are the people who evolve and make wire ties, earn a boat load of money and retire before they hit 30.
5. Wire Cutters- When said fingers are numb from all the un-doing and the child is driving you nuts with the millionth "please open my present!", cut through with wire cutters. Why I don't use it as the first option? 3 kids under 6 with wire cutters on the floor? Just asking for trouble.

            

And I have also learnt some key things about opening Christmas presents 

1. Never throw away instruction manuals. Evan is nuts about Transformers now. He discovered them after bringing home an encyclopaedia of Transformers. So, he got a ton of Transformers. Unfortunately, while he loves them and can go off at length about their stats, he can't transform them. Nimble fingers he does not have. So, he gets us or more specifically Packrat to transform them and to do that, Packrat needs the instruction manual. Unfortunately, Deadend's manual got tossed out accidentally so he remains a Deceptacon stuck in a car's body. Too bad for Deadend. 

2. If you know what the big presents are, get the kids to open the smaller ones first, because once the big ones are opened, the small ones stand no chance. And while this was happening, I was thinking of the poor toys in the Toy Story trilogy. 

3. Don't open all the presents at a go. Stagger them. Give presents air time and it helps prevent present fatigue. The 'wow's are louder this way. 

Anyway, we can finally see the bottom of the tree now and JED have enough toys to open a toy store all by themselves. But before they could do that, I made them pick toys from their new stashes and give them to our helper, for her son. I told them that unlike them, her son wasn't getting anything on Christmas and they should share some of what they had. And they picked some very nice toys for our helper's son. This fits into the bigger message we want to send out at Christmas. The same one that I wrote about for JEDPacks! And I hope that JED will remember all these little acts and will do these things without prodding when they get older.

 Technorati Tags: Christmas, Pre-schoolers

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