Christmas began at 3:45am. Neko wandered into our room and declared it was morning. We declared it was an indecent hour to be awake, and thank goodness, she believed us.

However, at 6:15am we could no longer stall. She trudged into our room, sadly declaring there were no presents. We realize now she had peeked out into the living room and looked at the Christmas tree. Since we put the presents around the fireplace (where there’s a rug for my rapidly expanding caboose), she didn’t see them. Tom took the moment to run out into the living room and get the video camera rolling. I walked a sad Neko into the living room. “Are you sure there are no presents?” I asked.

And then she looked up and saw all the boxes and packages and her face lit up and she started going nuts, babbling about presents and Santa and ohmygoodness. It was priceless. We couldn’t have scripted it better. I looked up with glee at Tom who looked at me and said, “Oh, shit.” Turns out the video camera was on stand-by the whole time. So we won’t be able to share that little piece of history with, well, anyone, but believe us, it was good.

The next hour was a blur of wrapping paper and presents, much like the first photo. Neko would declare each thing she opened the most amazing thing in the world and then toss it over her shoulder in search of another present. Shep was watching Neko carefully to see what he should be doing, but he looked a bit like a foreigner in a new country.

When Neko was done opening her presents, she insisted on helping us open ours. And when we moved on to my parents’ house later that day, she helped everyone there open their gifts. She’s becoming quite a pro, and perhaps next year we’ll rent her out to Donald Trump to be his official present opener, since clearly he’s too busy cracking on Rosie O’Donnell to open his own gifts.

Later on, Tom made scones and we played with the new train set. We broke up many squabbles and marveled at the wreckage Christmas left behind. We are clearly not yet in the years where Christmas day is full of sipping coffee and lazy naps while the children play with their new gifts, but we did get to witness the absolute joy and exuberance of the first Christmas where all the pieces have come together in Neko’s head. And I wouldn’t trade that for a nap. Probably.

We thought for sure there would be, like, a zillion things to do on Christmas Eve. We had carved out the late afternoon and evening do Christmas-y stuff as a family. But it turns out that everyone in the world must stay home on this day, since everything closed up at 5pm.

So we shoved the kids into the car the minute they woke up from naps and sped downtown so we could hit a few events before they closed. The whatever-they’ve-named-the-energy-company-this-week train display was first on the list. The kids loved this the most because of the nice people who gave away free cookies at the entrance…but the train display was really neat, too. Then we hunted down the model of downtown made of gingerbread, which was really ho-hum. Much neater was the gingerbread house display in a nearby hotel lobby. I think gingerbread houses will be on our agenda next week, even though Christmas is officially over. Then a quick zip by the square to see ice skaters and to gaze at some big trees.

We headed to dinner at P.F. Chang’s, which is totally not Christmas-y at all, but quite delicious. Then home just in time to tuck the kids into bed with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads. Or something like that.

In the middle of the holiday rush of shopping and wrapping and general mayhem, we’re trying to make time for holiday traditions. For as long as I can remember, we have made spritz cookies. An almond-y butter cookie, it always gets shot out of the Super Shooter in the shape of trees, snowmen, or wreaths and then decorated with red hots and other holiday colors.

Neko decorated by haphazardly cramming as many toppings as possible on each cookie, Chris methodically placed each red hot in a particular location, and Shep sat back and ate the toppings while admiring everyone else’s work.

In 2007 I will be publishing my thesis on how one’s personality can be accurately assessed by their cookie decorating.