Dawning Realizations

I have figured out a lot of weird yet interesting things over the past few weeks. Who knew one could learn so much from Christmas?

First off, I have discovered that while every toy has a preferred age range or is marked for age appropriateness, the packaging of that toy is FAR from being acceptable for a child.

Letting a child try and open his own present, even if it is an age appropriate toy, could actually endanger your child.

A relative sent the coolest toy to my triplets for Christmas. They very painstakingly chose something that was colorful and educational yet fun for my kids.

But, when I went to try and free the cute and very wonderful toy from its seemingly innocent box, I met with a flurry of wiring, zip ties and very strange, opaque, almost tape-like (just not sticky) packing straps.

These weird straps almost looked like the 6-pack ring sort of packaging that you would find binding a 6-pack of Coca-Cola together.

You know, the stuff that we are supposed to painstakingly cut each ring apart to keep the ducks and other birds from getting caught in it when it goes to landfills.

This toy is about the size of a large butter carton. It doesn't even seem like it be the sort to try and escape or run away from its packaging, but the manufacturer must have found it very feisty.

I must have spent a good thirty minutes trying to untangle, untie, and un-stick that poor little ladybug pull toy from its wrappings.

I had to resort to attempting to use scissors, a pocket knife, and even some weird tool that came in my husband's dremel set in some attempt to free this ladybug.

The entire time I was performing the extraction surgery for the toy, I was having to be extremely careful because little bits of wiring and other dangerous, tempting, ingestables were flying all over the living room from my efforts.

We did finally get the toy free, and all of its toy restraints gathered and safely discarded AWAY from my little people so that they didn't choke or anything.

Oh my goodness, that toy was well packaged. It was almost parent-proofed, too!

Another weird thing that I discovered this holiday season, is that there is a very good reason that they advise you NOT to do your baking while you have guests over.

I had my sister, father and nieces and nephew over on Christmas Eve for dinner and a few presents.

I had thought it would be nice if the kids could help drop the cookies before I baked them, since I had the forethought to go ahead and make the cookie dough earlier that day for that night's usual baking tradition.

It seemed so easy, to. All I had to do was hand Bregon the large pot of dough, a foil lined cookie sheet, and three spoons and the kids did the rest.

I popped the first batch into the electric oven, and got a little sidetracked talking to my baby sister for a while.

You also have to understand, that my oven has this weird trick that it does when one attempts to use its timer.

It has a shut-off button for some weird reason that decides to turn off the top oven (which was the one I have to use while the kids are awake) so I wasn't up to trying to use that timer!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I managed to over-cook those cookies. Sister realized what was happening, too, and actually attempted to help me time the next batch.

7 batches later, we had quite a collection of hockey puck cookies to leave out for Santa. Poor Santa, I hope he found it as funny as we did!

Christmas Day, when one has a rather large family, can also resemble moving day, once the garbage has been taken outside and set on the trash pile.

We thought we were doing so well, unboxing everything on Sunday night so that the cartons would get picked up with Monday's trash collection.

It was a great idea. It forced us to make sure that our assembly was all complete, and that we had all of the pieces and hardware for everything.

Monday, we would have still had time to get replacements or switch everything out if there had been any problems (in theory anyways!)

Then Christmas Day came, and we unwrapped everything under our tree. This left us with diaper boxes and shirt boxes EVERYWHERE, all of which eventually found their way to this pile in between the recliner and the sofa.

That pile was a tall as I am! Husband very valiantly took it all outside while the kids were having their nap.

Now, I am all sorts of anxious that we will get fined for having trash on the trash pile on a non-pick-up day because it looks like we just moved in, there is so much garbage out there!

Over all, I have really learned quite a bit this past Christmas season. Unfortunately, it will be a whole year before I have to try and recollect what those lessons were, exactly.

Hopefully, I will have managed to learn from my mistakes and fix them for NEXT year...if my memory will allow!