Yesterday was my oldest son’s 12th birthday. We started with a birthday breakfast.<\/p>\n
“Okay, birthday boy,” I said. “We have two presents to give you in the morning instead of tonight. You’ll see why.”<\/p>\n
“Wait, wait!” his little brother said. “I have one for him, too.”<\/p>\n
“Really?” I had tracked down his present (a very specific Lego kit) the previous night, and it was still in my bedroom.<\/p>\n
“Just wait!” he said, running back to his bedroom.<\/p>\n
So we did. My oldest was itching to open his two morning presents, but more curious to see what his little brother was up to.<\/p>\n
“I hope you like it,” the little guy said, coming out of his room.<\/p>\n
He was holding a cardboard box about twice as big as a shoe box. On top of the box, he’d built a roller coaster out of green pipe cleaners. The pipe cleaners formed the rails of the track. Toothpicks were the slats that held them together. The track started with a steep climb (about 18 inches high), then swooped down and through a loop. Half way down that initial hill, a paper roller coaster car was connected to the track. A little paper person rode inside the car, eyes wide.<\/p>\n
“Wow!” the birthday boy said, taking it. “That’s amazing!”<\/p>\n
His brother showed him how he could move the car if he wanted to, and the two of them huddled over it, talking roller coasters and roller coaster construction.<\/p>\n
I glanced back at my bedroom, where the two store-bought presents waited to be brought out.<\/p>\n
They didn’t stand a chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Giving presents is not a competition. It really isn’t. But when you’re totally and completely crushed, it sure feels like one. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-n"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-Cr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}