Wherein William *Almost* Figures It Out

Santa Claus brought William a Long-Shot Blaster Nerf gun and Katie a small keyboard.

(Katie's toy has a mistake on it, but I refuse to let it bother me. It's just a small switch labeled "Drum's: On/Off." It doesn't seem to affect her enjoyment of the toy.)

"Mr. Claus" had to make an emergency battery run at 11:00 pm on Christmas Eve, while "Mrs. Claus" tried to put together the Long-Shot Blaster. I misread the instructions and jammed the stupid thing almost beyond repair, but Scott was able to pry the misplaced piece out with a screwdriver when he got home with two four-packs of AAs. (Do you ever wonder whether the real Mr. & Mrs. Claus get in late-night arguments over toy instructions?)

Scott threw the boxes to both toys out into the garage, because last year--when William found certain empty toy boxes in the laundry room after Christmas--we had already had to explain to William that Santa has to leave the toy boxes for the toys he delivers or he might get confused about which boxes are empty and which are not and then some unfortunate kid wouldn't get their gifts. I never would have thought that one of our holiday family traditions would center around how the trash is handled.

Anyway, Scott let the kids spend some of their Christmas money at the BX the day after Christmas. William chose something that turned out to need two AA batteries. Scott came to me asking where the extra batteries were and couldn't believe it when I told him we were out of that size. To account for all eight, I reminded him that Katie's keyboard took six; William's dinosaur game took two. William was quiet for several seconds before asking me, "How do YOU know how many batteries the keyboard took?"

Gulp.