The Post has an article about Target hiring a former CIA agent to give parents guidance on how to get your kids’ Christmas list, hide the presents, etc.  Parents need guidance for this?  Half the fun of being a parent is thinking through these things.  Tucking the gifts away in the back corner of the “scariest” room in the house.  Scary here can mean it’s dark, or that the kids know that entering that room is likely to give them the chore of cleaning it up.  Handling the Santa presents versus the mom and dad ones by changing your handwriting on the gift tag by using your opposite hand and wrapping the gifts in different wrapping paper.  Having the kids do the Santa letter at Grandma’s house so that she can pilfer the letter from the mailbox as soon as the kids have gone home.  (You do have to make certain not to get caught with that letter in hand: I found Cameron’s on the kitchen table this morning after some late night shopping… would have been a bad scene had he come out for breakfast when called.)

I was the kid who would find the presents in our house.  I remember how much fun it was to go sneaking around.  So now when I catch Callie doing the same thing, I leave one present in a place she’ll find.  But I make it the most educational/boring/oh my goodness how could my parents get me that present, just to see if she’ll confess her knowledge and thus display her means and methods.  Oooh, so much fun.

I did pick up a new trick from the article – hadn’t tried having the kids write their letters in invisible ink.  That’s a good one.