Christmas 2014

As Christmas morning arrived Leo awoke. It was still early when I heard the plodding of his size 11 feet coming along the landing. He had awoken and made his way straight to my room, completely missing the stocking full of presents hung on the inside of his bedroom door. It didn't take Leo long to clamber into bed and ask for the Lego Movie to be popped on the television, but it was a nice quiet half hour as we all came around and woke up slowly. Eventually I fetched the stocking of gifts so that Leo could sit quietly in bed and open them, to my surprise it became apparent that he wasn’t in the mood for presents quite yet.

Once we had all managed to keep our eyes open we made our way downstairs, only to come face to face with an abundance of Christmas presents. Santa really had been in the night! The excitement bubbled in Leo and he raced towards the Christmas Tree to find a present to open, but as Daddy was not yet downstairs, Leo was informed he had to be patient and wait a little bit longer to open his gifts. Of course informing a 3 year old to ‘wait’ when it comes to opening presents went down like a lead balloon… And somewhere between then and Daddy making his arrival in the living room we had lost Leo to a rather bad mood. Even when instructed that he could now begin opening his gifts, Leo was not interested, he did not want to play ball. Leo strode over to the lounge door and said ‘I don’t like you! I slam the door!’ and proceeded to do just that, before having a cry on the stairs… It wasn’t exactly the morning of excitement I had in mind!

I happened to know of one special gift that Santa had brought for Leo, a gift that he had set up on the landing all ready for one very lucky little boy, and at this point it seemed like the only way to put a smile back on his face again. Taking him in my arms I carried Leo back up the stairs to where there was a rather big present, I began to help him remove the wrapping paper until we revealed Leo’s shiny new train table! Of course as soon as he saw the tracks lay in wait, he couldn’t un-wrap the rest quickly enough.

This was where Leo spent the first few hours of Christmas, and I suddenly remembered why we had wanted to wait until later to show him where Santa had left this present… Once Leo’s mood had made a complete U-turn and those dark grey clouds had cleared from over his head, we knew it was safe to head back downstairs and begin opening some more of Santa’s gifts.

The morning quickly dissolved into the afternoon and as usual Christmas was running on full speed ahead. Presents were slowly opened and then played with before moving on to anything else, which of course is why it took Leo a good few days to open all of his gifts, but it was so lovely to see him enjoying and appreciating each of his new possessions.

With such a busy morning behind us we were all really pleased to sit down for Christmas lunch, Roast Turkey and all the trimmings, Pigs in Blankets, Roast Potatoes and Stuffing. A feast fit for a king, Leo had been talking about Christmas Dinner for weeks on the run up to the big day, but I knew he was going to take one look at it and refuse to eat it… I was right. He did. So while the rest of the family tucked into a delicious lunch… Leo decided he would sit and eat Brioche before discovering a love for Cheese and biscuits and feasted away on many of those!

We pulled crackers…Leo almost went flying on more than one occasion, but he spent the entire time chuckling away. He even wore his cracker hat with the rest of us before quickly running away back to his train table at the end of the meal.

The evening was spent over at Leo’s Granddad’s partners house, where even more gifts were bestowed upon him, more food was consumed and Mummy may have had one or two glasses of bubbly! With the moon high in the sky and Christmas day coming to an end, we let some fireworks off into the night sky to see a final dazzle of glitter before Christmas was over.

Leo received some lovely gifts and I am still trying to sort through his toy boxes in order to make room. His favourite gifts by far were his Nintendo 2DS which is proving a luxury on car trips and meals out in order to keep him entertained, and of course the Train Table that is getting daily play action.

Another Christmas has shone like a shooting star and twinkled away for another year, but seeing Leo enjoy the magic and listen out for Santa Clause was such a beautiful experience, and this is just the very tip of the magic to come.