245. It’s still Christmas

As I knew he would, my husband is over the moon about my - in all modesty - exceptionally good idea. Then he exclaims:

‘We never got the present!’

My turn to be puzzled.

‘What present?’

‘Our Christmas present!’

I cannot believe it. The joint present, the present that was for us as a couple and not us just as parents, the pièce de résistance under the tree and we completely forgot about it! 

This is terrible. I am not sure I can handle this. These adjectives we used to talk about our children: ‘first-world-problem child’ or ‘spoilt-French-brat’ and ‘spoilt-English-brat’ depending of the parent making the claim are now perfectly describing us - the parents! This is crushing news.

Or did we forget because we were so busy organising the kids’ presents? And if this is the case, then it is our great fault if our kids are behaving like les enfants terribles. 

I don’t know which is worse and my mind is going into over-drive.

‘This is bad! Really bad. How could we forget?’

But being English my husband’s mind never goes into overdrive. It goes in pragmatic mode. He is already sitting at the computer and has retrieved the Internet page with our precious gift with the useless place your order reminder.

‘We agreed on this one, didn’t we?’

A few clicks of the mouse, a few keys hit in rapid succession and there it is. Our Christmas present is on its way. Will it get here on time?