This year Santa was supposed to bring Mason a fort, and by Santa I mean Wal-Mart and MasterCard. I am horrible at building things, and so Howard (a co-worker and friend of ours) helped us out in the physical labor department. The fort’s been assembled and sitting in the backyard for a few days now. It’s been so cold that we figured Mason wouldn’t go in the backyard, and we’ve been pretty good about keeping him away from the window blinds.

Somehow today, Mason broke through our security barriers, looked out the back window, and saw the fort. This was a few minutes after my dad had stopped by, so we spun some tale about how Santa had dropped the fort off at Dad’s, then Dad and Santa put it together and Dad brought it over. It’s hard enough for kids to have to wait until Christmas morning when they don’t know what they’re getting. All afternoon, Mason’s been peeking out the back door and saying, “can I go outside now?“. And of course, the answer’s no. “If you go out there today, Santa might get upset and take it back tomorrow!”

Part of the problem is Mason’s obviously almost as smart as we are. By next year we’ll have no hope and my guess is he’ll be hiding presents from us instead.