If your kids stayed up late Christmas Eve, how was your Christmas?

I was just curious to see how everyone's Christmas was, especially if your kids went past their usual bedtimes. They are normally in bed by 8:30 and we did not get home until 9:30. Bedtime was around 9:45. Low and behold my one DS who never falls asleep in the car, did. By waking him, it set him off to a full meltdown. For some reason, he was determined to wear a pull up to bed (he's been in underwear at night FT for over 2 months). After him screaming for a good 10 minutes, I just gave up, went in their room and allowed him to put on a pull up. After that he went right to sleep.

Christmas morning, my on DS woke around 8:00 and my other DS who had the meltdown the night before slept until almost 10:00. :woohoo: The one who woke first I allowed him to open his stocking and play with the fire house I got them. All the wrapped presents had to wait until his brother got up. We just hung out and played.

The rest of the day went great. We stayed at home and they got to play all day long.

It really felt good to have two well rested & happy kids. It was such a huge difference from previous years.

 

We have so many young children in my family that this year we decided to do Christmas Eve earlier. (17 cousins under the age of 12....8 of them are under the age of 3) We were all done festivities by 7pm which was great! My girls (we have 4: ages 8, 6, and twins who will be 3 in January)...they were still crazy and tired because they were so wound up. They are usually up until 9 or 10 on Christmas Eve, so I guess they were less tired than past years, but it was hard to really notice the difference with them. I think the biggest difference was with my husband and I... we actually got to go to bed a earlier since the festivities wrapped sooner, so I think we were more rested, which in turn helps us to be a little more patient with the kids.

On a side note, we could hear our girls awake upstairs around 6am on Christmas morning. We told them they had to wait until 7am to come downstairs. We could hear our older girls trying to contain our twins up in their room! They were looking at the clock and counting down the minutes. Then with about 8 minutes left, I heard Rachael (one of my twins..the rambunctious one!) broke free and ran down the stairs. And the girls started screaming, "Rachael's coming downstairs!!!!!!!!" and they all ran down and my husband and I jumped out of bed because we all knew what would happen if she was left unattended in the living room for even 30 seconds! It was hysterical! We were all laughing and the kids were screaming and within about 10 minutes everything was unwrapped. Talk about screaming! Then we all sat around eating chocolate and candy at 7:30am. I have to say it will be one of my favorite Christmas morning memories ever!

Shannon

 

My two stayed up to almost 10 on Christmas Eve and slept to 8 on Christmas. They did take a nap for an hour yesterday and were in pretty good moods yesterday.

 

2/3 of my kids took naps on Christmas Eve so that staying up later was better. They were up about 8:00am the next morning, after bedtime had been about 10:00/30 the night before. It worked out great!

 

The kids stayed up later on Christmas Eve and Christmas and weren't too bad the next day. It was the following day where they started their meltdown. One long nap later, they were back on track.