We're getting a lot of early Christmas gifts for our 18 month old son.

He doesn't know what Christmas is.  He's enjoying stacking boxes and moving them around in general.

I'm thinking we should open a few, because saving them all would lead to a lot of distractions on Christmas Day.

And if we open them up early and they are cute little gifts, we can take pictures of him using the gifts and send them back to the gift giver as an early Christmas Thank you. So they know on Christmas day that our guy is definitely smiling with their gift (cause they already have a picture of it).

Also, we figure if we get duplicate gifts or things we already have (we have a lot of cars for him to ride on) we can donate the extra gifts to charity programs, so other children can have a slightly better Christmas hopefully.

Next year, maybe, as he learns the story behind Christmas, we'll start testing his willpower and patience by making him sweat it out until Christmas day before he can open anything. But for now, in his ignorant bliss, we figure we might as well have some fun and donate when we can.