A New Anticipation

I don't know about you but I loved Christmas as a kid. My parents were fantastic at letting/helping us believe in the magic (aka: Santa) for as long as possible; I was 13 before I knew the truth :(. One year when we woke up Christmas morning my dad "discovered" something on the roof of our house. The family room to our house had been added on to the house at some point long before our family moved in and there was a great fireplace in that room. Because it was an addition, our bedroom windows led right out onto the roof so we could easily see it all the way down to the chimney. So one year (I may have been 11, not entirely sure) when we woke up my dad told us to look out our window. And what did we see? Tracks.... Sleigh tracks, reindeer hoofprints and Santa's footprints leading to the chimney and back to the sleigh tracks. There was even a round print where his bag had been set down by the chimney. To this day, my dad claims it was Santa, no matter how much I beg and plead for him to tell me how he did it. It couldn't have been an easy feat since it was winter in South Dakota so there was about a foot of snow on the roof. We always had piles of presents from Santa as well as a tree loaded with presents. My dad's presents were always entertaining: a crisp, fifty-dollar bill stuck into a toilet paper roll and wrapped up and one year he wrapped up a piece of 2x4 wood. The wood went to beds that he had made my sister and I but they weren't put together yet. My dad is quite handy and has made several presents over the years, including the scooter he made for Tristan (and his cousin) last year. See? Isn't it great?! And now that Tristan is big enough, he loves it!

Over the years, as I got older and no longer lived at home, Christmas became less about the magic and more like just another day. It was still a nice day to be with family but I didn't have the excitement for it like I did as a child. But now that we have Tristan the anticipation has returned but in a totally different way. Rather than being excited about what I'm going to get, I'm excited about what he's going to get and how much I KNOW he's going to LOVE it! The kid is a little monkey so we bought him a Lil Tikes play set that has a "climbing wall" (really just a rounded ladder with hand holds), a slide, a basketball hoop and a hole for throwing a football and another for kicking a soccer ball. We also got him some books which he loves; I even made him his own alphabet book with pictures of him and his favorite people/things. Even though he's only one, I can't wait to see how excited he'll be on Christmas morning when he sees his playset. Though I miss the anticipation of a child for Christmas, I think this new anticipation and seeing Christmas through my son's eyes is even better!