Xavier Inherits Aunt Kathy's Christmas Sneak
Greetings to everyone as the Day of Christmas fast approaches!
Xavier's Aunt Kathy's Christmas gifts arrived earlier this week. One of the neatly-wrapped packages did not survive the shipping in tact; it had a gash in the wrapping paper which left little to the imagination as to what the wrapping meant to conceal.
No problem. We had wrapping tape, and we used it.
We decided to set up a Christmas Tree this year, but left it ornamentless. Last year, the tree was ornamentless from the bottom to mid-tree, but this year we fully Xavier-proofed it. We set up the tree Sunday during Xavier's nap and placed what wrapped gifts we had under it, including the patched gift from Aunt Kathy.
Xavier left the packages under the tree alone, only using a few of the larger ones to climb up and play with the burned out lights (he is obsessed with the lights that do not turn on, and constantly points them out to us, expecting us to fix them).
That changed mid morning today. While using Grandma Penny's present (in a large box) as a platform to reach a dark section of the tree, he looked down and saw Aunt Kathy's torn-but-repaired gift. Something about that package called to him.
Hearing a rustling noise (I was working from home) not common to his previous play, I looked out to see what He was doing. About that time, Xavier squealed with glee as he pulled from behind the tree the torn package—only now, the patched hole was once more open and much wider than when it arrived.
Rebecca and I had to make a decision: hide the gift or let him open it. We decided on the latter for several reasons.
We told Xavier he could open it. He tore off just enough wrapping paper to fully expose the Tonka toy, then waited for Mom to get the scissors to extract it from its packaging.
Xavier power-played with his new toy. He took it to lunch with us, holding it in the car. He even took it to bed with him for his nap.
We thought this would be the end of it, that Xavier would not go back for more packages to open. And that held true until shortly after lunch. Then, he found another package from Aunt Kathy wrapped in the same paper as the Tonka toy. He figured (correctly) since this is the same paper as before, this must be for me. Fortunately, Mom was there to put the kibosh on that!
We may have to pick up all the packages until Christmas Eve; Mom kept telling Xavier, "No, that one is not yours" many times before he went down for his nap.
His antics reminded me of my sister when we were much younger, who blamed the cats for damaging the wrapping on the gifts under the tree. Surprisingly, only her gifts ever got damaged by the cats. Apparently, Xavier inherited Aunt Kathy's Christmas sneakiness.