The Magic Is Gone

I've been having a temper tantrum all day. I don' t know if I didn't get enough sleep last night or what, but my fuse has been awfully short.

To make matters worse, Jay absentmindedly(and completely innocently) told his brother during a phone call about the miraculous attainment of our Wii while Seth and Sam were playing it in the same room. I actually heard his end of the conversation, thought about shouting downstairs to "pipe down" but thought that would only draw attention to what he said. I let it be and continued to grunt and fume for very little reason at all.

While Jay and I were both taking a break upstairs and reading in bed, Seth came upstairs and started prattling in a sing-songy voice, "I know that you guys are Santa Claus! I heard you talking on the phone!"

Silence.

I waited for Jay to fix it while I stared at my book, both to keep Seth from seeing the horror and disappointment in my eyes, and also to keep my body language indifferent.

Jay immediately explained that, indeed, the Wii was from us, but everything else was really from Santa. Seth's rebuttal was that, no, all the writing on the presents was in the same handwriting and the wrapping paper was the same.

Totally busted.

And I was so sad. And mad.

Jay gave me lots of room to blow off steam and didn't say a word while I got up, got dressed, went downstairs and proceeded to take down every single Christmas decoration...including the tree.

Very immature, but in my heartbreak over his loss of innocence, and the way in which it happened, I coped by declaring Christmas over. I spent the day boxing things up, vacuuming up pine needles and moving furniture back to its rightful place.

I don't know if it was the right thing to do. Normally, we have the tree up until New Year's. There is a part of me that thinks that perhaps I acted a bit hasty tearing it all down. I'm not nearly as upset now and get that it was a mistake, one that I very easily could have made any number of times this last week as I retold the exact same story to several different people, only I was lucky enough to not get caught by a certain boy with Elephant Ears.

Jay is forgiven. I'm more upset at the fact that Seth knows than how he knows. I feel like we only got a couple of fun years. You know...at first they are clueless, then oblivious, then they get it and it's so fun. I thought I had a few more of those. But, I don't. Life goes on. It was bound to happen eventually. Blah, blah, blah.

But what about next year? Is everything now going to be, "Wink, wink...don't tell your brothers?" Can I depend on him to be a good enough actor at eight years old?

I don't know. But, in the meantime, at least my downstairs is clean.