A Toddler Left “No Present Spared,” Unwrapped Family’s Christmas Gifts At 3 A.M.

North Carolina parents Scott and Katie Reintgen were sleeping peacefully on Christmas Eve when their 3-year-old son woke them with a request. He wanted a pair of scissors. As if that’s not frightening enough, they soon learned why he wanted scissors. This toddler, who we should note right up top is the middle child in his family, had gone in and unwrapped all of the family’s Christmas gifts at 3 a.m. Classic middle child behavior.

“The 3-year-old had found his Spiderman web shooters and so he wanted scissors to cut them out” Scott Reintgen told NBC News. Meanwhile, the rest of the family, including the couple’s 6-year-old and 1-year-old, were still in their beds. Scott and Katie Reintgen told the news outlet that they had spent hours wrapping gifts, only to discover their 3-year-old, who they call “the midnight perpetrator,” had gone in to unwrap “literally everything, from the tiniest eraser to the biggest box.”

The dad of three shared a photo of his son’s hard work on X, formerly Twitter, with the Christmas tree all lit up in the background and wrapping paper tossed all around the room. “Yall. My three year old came down at 3am and unwrapped EVERYONE’S presents,” he captioned the photo.

While the situation was not ideal, Reintgen went on to assure people that they weren’t mad at their son. Especially once he gave his explanation as to why he unwrapped everyone’s gifts, and this is next level middle child shenanigans because he managed to make it sound like he was just trying to take care of everyone. “My son’s version of events was that he came downstairs and wanted to open all the presents so no one was confused and they all knew what they had gotten,” Scott explained. “That’s his story.”

Fortunately, Katie sprang into action and managed to get enough gifts rewrapped so that their oldest son, who believes in Santa, was none the wiser. And now we know who could be the villain and who is definitely the hero. “She was the hero of the night for the repackaging job she did,” Scott told The Washington Post.

We aren’t the only ones thinking this is classic second child stuff. “The 6-year-old is very much the rule-follower so the idea that someone would just go down and open all the presents would just be unthinkable to him,” Scott told NBC News. “But our middle child is very much the adventurous, ridiculous, no-rules, have-fun kind of kid.”

After Christmas morning came and went, Katie and Scott spoke with their 3-year-old about how he felt when he opened his presents and explained that they wanted to make sure everyone got to feel the same way. They’re hoping he won’t do it again next year, but one thing is for certain. They got a great Christmas story out of it.