Back to Christmas Eve night ...... when last we talked Molly was asleep

When last I wrote about Christmas, I was all prepared to sneak into Molly's room with the stocking and a couple of presents. Everything was planned, all the other presents were under the tree, I had waited until Molly had taken her regular toilet break at 2am and she was fast asleep.

Or so I thought.
3am. I picked up the stocking and the couple of presents and peered into her room. Wide awake. Eyes wide open.
Drop the stocking back into the other room, then try to explain where the stocking's gone. My dubious possibilities were:
Maybe Santa's taken it with him, or he's moved it downstairs, or maybe he's downstairs even as we speak.
It probably helped that Molly wasn't completely awake because she seemed to buy these bloody awful excuses. But then she gets upset because she can't get to sleep and maybe Santa wont come.
30 minutes later and she's calmed down enough to try to get back to sleep
But of course, it's now 3:30am and I've got to wait at least another 30 minutes before she goes to sleep deeply enough to sneak aback into her room with the stocking.
Of course, it's not that easy and by now she's far too excited to get to sleep no matter how much she wants to. 4am comes round. 4:30am.

I give up and put the bloody stocking down into the lounge.
I figured I'd tell Molly that Santa must have decided she wasn't asleep enough but still wanted to leave her presents.

Come the morning and she's finally asleep so Louise takes a chance and drops the stocking in.
5 minutes later she's running into our room, unpacks her stocking with us and then leads her bleary eyed parents into the Lounge where she surveys the haul and tells us "that's more than he's ever brought me before!!!"
And later on that day she tells us that she thinks she saw Mummy dropping her stocking off. But how could that be, she ponders, when Mummy was in bed.

Despite this minor hiccup, we had a delightful, wonderful Christmas day.

But I have a feeling, a nagging worry, that this was a sign of things to come, that maybe she secretly knows that Santa isn't real. By next year I have the horrible feeling that she'll start asking far too many questions and not really believe the whole thing.
It's all part of growing up and she surely seems to be growing up far too quickly. It's something I realise that I don't have a lot of control over. But that doesn't mean I have to enjoy it.