Paula:
	“Paula! Paula! Paula! PaulaPaulaPaulaPaulaPaula!!!!!”
A cacophony of voices screamed in my head, beckoning me to open my eyes. My heart was racing as I jumped out from under the sheets. I’ve been pre-disposed to always assume danger, so I spun around the room, scanning for whatever was calling my name.  Something gave a sharp tug at my feet. My head snapped towards the source, my eyes flaring with energy, ready for a fight.
	It. 
	Was a four-year old girl, her little arms reaching up to meet my thighs. With her oversized sweater, patterned with gingerbread men and speckled with flecks of glittering red and green, She was a walking Christmas ornament “Abby?” I said in disbelief. 
	It was Abby, a student at Polestar Preschool. Alongside her were four other students from Polestar, staring up at me, wide-eyed and grinning, trying desperately to hold back their mirth.
	I wasn’t up to the task of containing myself, so I threw my head back and laughed, and the kids echoed it back. Of course! This Christmas, all the kids stayed here at Polestar so they could spend the morning with each other. And since I never lock my door, of course they were going to get in to see me. How they snuck past my parent’s room, I’ll never know. Ah well. I laughed again, picked up Abby and fell backwards onto my bed, with her screaming giddily the whole way down. All the kids followed suit and piled onto the bed, and we rolled around in a tickling war for a whole ten seconds. Believe me, sometimes that’s an eternity to a three year-old. Soon, one of the kids, Gary,  jumped out of the bed, eyes wild, spinning around the room. All the other kids started laughing, and I gave him a fake-stern look. The herd of them rolled out of bed and, almost in defiance of my disapproval, began to spin like tops, their arms outstretched, because as it turns out, my senseless fear is just hilarious to pre-schoolers. One by one, they fell to the ground, their faces contorted, their eyes unable to sit still in their sockets. They were sick as dogs from all the spinning. 
	Serves ‘em right. 
	After they had recovered, we all rushed downstairs, with Gary and Abby leading me down by the wrists. My mom and dad followed soon after, but it looked as though they were  awake already. My mom walked into the kitchen, smiling at all the children, and my dad, walking over to the fireplace to start up a blaze, greeted the room with a hearty “Merry Christmas!”, and the sentiment was returned. 
	Downstairs, the desks had been pushed aside to make space for all the children‘s sleeping bags, but there wasn’t a single one to be found in the middle of the room. Rather, all the sleeping bags had been carefully lined up right next to the fireplace. I guess Santa had to be pretty quiet this year.
	Every inch of the room was filled with the smell of  cinnamon and hot chocolate, and the radio was softly playing in the background, telling sweet tales of the season. Our Christmas tree sat in a corner, pine needles littering the floor and an angel overhead to guide the way, a whisper of a song emanating from its center. Each shatterproof ornament hanging from its branches reflected the warmth and kindness of the fire, each one as inviting as the last. 
	Spotting the presents, the kids once again formed a pile of warmth and laughter. I didn’t join them this time. If you had been there, you would have known that it was for my own safety. Tiny arms and tiny legs were indistinguishable from each other as the kids wriggled around, trying to find their own presents. I walked over to my dad, who could do nothing but stare at the chaos, and I hugged him tight. “Merry Christmas, ” I said softly. I turned to my mom, who had returned from the kitchen to laugh at the scene of the children in their hunt for presents,  and hugged her too. 
	I was under the assumption that the general confusion would stop once the kids opened their presents, but then, I’ve never experienced a Christmas with an entire gang of three and four year olds. Six fire trucks, six wooden airplanes, thirteen buckets of Legos , a Super Nintendo, what seemed to be thousands of hair accessories, and twenty-one naked Barbies were scattered around, a complete war zone if you ask me. Of course there were more treasures to be found, but I think you get the picture. “Paula, come play with us!”
	Abby was calling me, pulling out her own set of hair accessories from her stocking. “No, come play with us!” Gary yelled over the chaos, his attention pulled away from the train set he was attempting to assemble. If Abby wanted to play with me, then obviously, Gary did too. I couldn’t be in both places at once. 
	And so it began. A battle of the sexes ensued. Battle lines were drawn in the legoes, the two sides retreated and prepared their weapons: tiny fire trucks were lined up for a frontal attack, barbies commandeering tiny plastic Porsches were shifting into third gear, ready to mow down the tiny insignificant army men on the opposing side, wooden planes were soaring overhead, fueled by the tiny excitable arms of the boys, dropping candy shells and deadly shooter marbles to crush any rogue rainbow unicorn combatants. The battle was long, the battle was hard, but in the end, tired out, the two sides surrendered to each other, and dumped all their stocking candy into a pile in the middle of the room as a sign of goodwill.
	Once the room had settled down, I had to spend several minutes wiping tears of laughter from my face. My mother served tray after tray of every type of cookie imaginable. Some had red and green icing, some had peppermint baked in the middle. Ornaments and trees had been carefully cut out and baked to perfection, only to be topped with sugar and a hint of ginger. My mom always goes overboard when it comes to stuff like this. She had to have known it would start another war, and sure enough, her confections incited several small scale quarrels among the tiny nations. My dad delighted the boys by picking them all up at once like a gang of monkeys climbing a tree, while I let the girls braid my hair in the way that three year olds always do, using most, if not all, of their hair ties.
	The hours passed, and soon enough, the sun began to hang low in the sky: the parents were coming to pick up their kids. One by one, the children of Polestar Preschool left, thanking us for their fun day, giving tiny hugs with their tiny arms to their tiny adversaries of the great plastic war, until all of the children had gone home to relate the incidents of their day to their parents. Finally alone, exhausted, the three of us exchanged gifts, said our Merry Christmases and sat by the fire, another year come and gone.