’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, a creature was stirring — and it wasn’t a mouse.
A mother is warning parents to hide their Christmas presents well after she caught her daughter Evie, 4, sneaking around and opening her presents early last Christmas Eve.
Chloe Vizor is better prepared to keep the Christmas magic alive this year after her child ruined it the last time around.
“I was worried about it spoiling Christmas morning,” she told Kennedy News.
The 21-year-old had tucked her three girls into bed around 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve 2021.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads — or so Vizor thought.
An hour later she heard the pitter-patter of little steps upstairs.
Vizor’s two other children, Hope, 2, and Violet, 1, were sound asleep, but Evie had waited until her mom had slipped back downstairs to sneak into her parents’ bedroom, which is normally off-limits and where the gifts were stashed.
“I ran up there and caught her in the act,” Vizor said. “It only took her about five minutes and in that time she opened 10 of them, which is quite a lot. They were all scattered around the floor.”
“There were no adult ones, conveniently; it was all children’s ones that she’d opened. I spent the rest of the evening re-wrapping presents,” the shocked mom added.
“I was gutted and mad because I was like, ‘You understand what you’re doing,’” Vizor said.
The mom was especially upset to see her young daughter had already opened a doll, her main present early — “She absolutely loves baby dolls — that is her thing,” she said — but it didn’t seem to impact Evie’s Christmas morning.
“She had opened a baby doll, and I recorded her opening it again on Christmas Day and she acted so shocked, as if she hadn’t already opened it the night before,” Vizor recounted. “She hadn’t forgotten because when I showed her that video she was saying, ‘Naughty Evie’, so I don’t know why she acted surprised.”
Almost a year later, Evie — now 5 — still has hopes that Saint Nicholas will soon be there.
But this year Vizor is taking precautions to guarantee a Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night: The cunning mom has made sure to pile all the Christmas presents on top of her wardrobe and cover them up.
“Try to hide [the presents] up high or somewhere you can lock them away because, in just five minutes, they can open half of their parents,” Vizor warned.