Twas the day after Christmas.

I think the worst thing for a relatively new parent is having to get her butt up (in this case, this parent is ME) and go to work the day after Christmas. My husband is lucky enough to be able to stay home today with Mateo, who is in love with all his new toys and tricycle Santa brought him (and many thanks to all the Santas out there), and I have to say that while I'm not exactly jealous of him being able to do so, I am sort of sad.

Anyway. Enough wallowing in my stupid sadness. Now on to Christmas!

How was your Christmas? Good? Good. Mine? It was very good. My husband gave me a Flip video camera that he seems to think I absolutely hate, but I don't. I also got some Flip video camera extras and a book by David Sedaris because I was laughing so hard reading Me Talk Pretty One Day a couple weekends ago. I gave my husband a t-shirt with the "Dayman" song on it from Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a Fred Perry track jacket, and a Ben Sherman laptop bag for his nonexistent laptop, but he'll be using it as a messenger bag. Mateo gave him a calendar full of Mateo pics.

And Mateo. Ah, that little boy was very confused by Christmas. Our big plan was to get all the presents situated the night before, including his tricycle, and then I would have him come out into the living room while his Daddy was filming his reaction. Because as we all know, kids love presents. Mateo made a beeline to the trike because they have trikes at daycare, but not with pedals, so he's got to learn how to use pedals and to stop falling over on it. I don't think he noticed the presents at all until we pointed them out to him.

What was his reaction? He wanted the one present sitting on top that was unwrapped - a gift from relatives he received the night before. And then he wanted to run for the hills. The kid just didn't get it at all.

We slowly got him to open his presents. With each present, he demanded it "out" of the packaging, so it was a very slow process. Eventually he warmed up to the idea that he was getting all kinds of new toys, but it wasn't until all the gifts were opened, tags taken off, and things were sorta back to normal did he liven up.

Later we went to his Aunt's house for Christmas dinner, and with the help of his two cousins' excitement over their gifts, Mateo really got into the whole thing and was acting just as we hoped he would have on Christmas morning.

All in all, it was a very good Christmas even if we totally confused our child. I'm sure next year will be very different for him.