This time of the year, the web is aflutter with excited kid responses, to gifts they receive.  The kid starts screaming and runs all over the furniture.  The sight is so unusual the family dog can be seen in the corner of the screen, stunned in stillness. I love those videos. 

When my own children give me that kind of response mama melting happens.  Charlie, a.k.a. my 6″ tall baby boy, came pretty close to tears, when I surprised him with an early gift of Call of Duty Black Ops.  At that moment in time, nothing else mattered.  Yes! I, not his friends, not his dad, nor his brother, I the mama,  gave my son something special.  This something was so special, his teenage “I don’t care” facade cracked long enough for me to see that he appreciated the blessing I wanted to bestow upon him.

For the record I have to shop on Christmas Eve, because if I buy anything before that, the excitement of the gift giving is more than I can handle.  If I am the gift giver, secret gifts have a five hour maximum life span of maintaining secret status.  

The pure joy of having something to give combined with the purity of appreciation got me thinking.  Do we respond this way to life?  Life does not wait until a prescribed day to give us gifts. Personally I have found, that the larger the number of my age, the greater my joy at waking.  As much as I enjoy sleeping in, it doesn’t really happen, because every day I know there is a present.  The present can be an unexpected giggle with a friend about being tired.  I know that is irony.  Other times the present is large like surprise cookies or coffee making their way to me-or hearing a favorite song I hadn’t heard in a while-or a retelling a joke and delivering it right or-or-or. You get the point.

So this year’s blog present to you is the reminder that every day, even the ones where we forgot to put the clothes in the dryer before we went to bed, is a gift.  We can choose to take them for granted. Or maybe, every once is a while, we can break out of that mold we made for ourselves and reignite that enthusiasm all of us had when we realized the present we got was so, so perfect.

And, if you need help breaking out of that mold, having cookies for breakfast, when the kids aren’t watching can help with that.