A few years ago I put numbers on the gift tags for the kids instead of their names. To keep them guessing and not comparing and counting all their presents. The numbers were random, too, not just the standard “birth order” numbers. Then, on Christmas morning, we would reveal their number, and they were able to find their own gifts. I thought it was a brilliant idea, myself, and it seemed to work pretty well. <\/p>\n
For some reason, I haven’t been consistent about the secret number thing, and last year I think I just used their names. Well, today I finally got serious about the wrapping and wrapped a few of the LARGE gifts. The gifts that all the kids are going to look at and say, “I hope that’s MY present”. Not that bigger means better or more expensive, but to a kid, that’s how it seems. When John came home from school, my dad was here AND the phone was ringing. So I didn’t have time to explain to John who the BIG presents on the table were for. I just read the tag that said “to Skippy from Mom and Dad.” It was obvious that he did NOT like this idea as he scrunched up his face and in his angry voice said, “No, it has to be a REAL person!” He then proceeded to stomp up to his room and then stomp around and make as much noise as possible.<\/p>\n
As soon as I was off the phone and could give John my attention, I called him down from upstairs so I could talk to him. His face was red and splotchy and he had been crying. I tried to explain to him that even though these weren’t OUR names on the presents, they were going to be for US. I then gave him a little hint that one of the presents that had two names on it, (I think it was Bufford and Skeeter) was for him and one other person. That seemed to placate him just a little bit. He then helped me put the presents under the tree with only a little bit of sniffling.<\/p>\n
And I was once again reminded that sometimes the ideas that are going to be “great” are, in the eyes of the little people, “not so great.” Like the time I told Cole that he couldn’t wear that ripped, faded and almost falling apart shirt anymore and then grabbed the hole under the arm and ripped it right off of him. I was just laughing at how hilarious I am, and he was upset and hurt. Maybe I’m just too clever for my own good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few years ago I put numbers on the gift tags for the kids instead of their names. To keep them guessing and not comparing and counting all their presents. The numbers were random, too, not just the standard “birth order” numbers. Then, on Christmas morning, we would reveal their number, and they were able […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2779"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2784,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2779\/revisions\/2784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}