Reflections on Christmas

On Buying Presents for Michael:
I don't think I have ever surprised him with anything. I'm not a very good gift hider, and not even very good at thinking up gift ideas in the first place, so he usually has to coach me so much that he knows what I'm doing. i.e. "Well, Helen, you could get me video games." "Which one?... how do you spell that? Where should I buy it?"

So this year I got him a watch. Early in November. From the store where he works. He figured that one out pretty quickly. As far as gifts go, it's something we had already been saving for, since he sells watches and it's kind of good for him to have a watch.

Then I got him some pajamas, and I was going to surprise him, until we were having overnight guests and he said "I'm going to pick up some pajamas for myself because I can't just walk around in my underwear" (which is what he usually wears to bed) so I sighed and told him to "open this present, then...if you want it to be special I can pour you a glass of wine first".

But even then I didn't give up hope! I picked him a pair of $3 shorts, which granted, was sort of a joke anyway (he wears this pair of horrible grungy shorts that I can't wait to burn).

I discovered he is hiding other people's presents in the same spot. Do you think he saw them? I hope not.

So I thought as long as I was getting my Christmas bonus I would get him a pair of shoes, too. We were going to wait until next month but he needs them. So I bought him shoes!

They came in the wrong size.

OK, well, wrong sized-shoes would be a surprise all right. But not exactly what I was hoping for.
So, just for the sake of giving him something that he would want and enjoy and not expect - I got him a Dunkin Donuts gift card (justified by knowing that he'll spend his own money at Dunkin Donuts anyway). And then I found my purse in a different spot the next day. He had apparently been rifling through it looking for keys. What if he'd found it?

I was starting to think that if I wanted to surprise him then I would have to hide in the shower on Christmas morning, and jump out and scream when he comes in to pee.



Christmas day came and went and
1) He liked the watch even though he knew about it.
2) He was already wearing the new pajamas when he started opening presents, which made for far better Christmas morning photos than the, um, undies-as-jammies would have.
3) He somehow did not know that the wadded up shorts hidden in the training potty in the laundry room were for him.
4) He liked the shoes and tried them on just to be sure. They were not a fit but... he looks forward to getting the correct size (at no additional cost to us!)
5) Opened the DD gift card and said "Wow! How much is on here?" Visibly excited.


Tomorrow - "Elliott's Christmas" which might also be titled "All about the Who down in Whoville, who taught me that believing in Santa won't make you greedy and faithless"