"It's My Birthday, And We Go See Santa!"

For several months now we've heard the above statement excitedly, yet matter of factly, come out of the mouth of our Sweetie. Her birthday is only days before Christmas, so I told her, sometime mid-summer, that we'd go see Santa on her birthday. Ever since, and almost daily, Sweetie has reminded us of this thrilling upcoming event.

We keep asking her what she wants for her birthday and Christmas. All she says is "presents". She doesn't quite get what exactly is going to happen - and this is a good thing. She's at the perfect age where she's excited for the holidays, but doesn't exactly know why. And she's also at the perfect gift-giving age because all the things she's "into" - Play-doh", children's board games, puzzles - are all pretty inexpensive. Perfect! Big fun for her, little expense for us. Yay!

We do plan to give Sweetie a train set for Christmas - set up and running around the tree when we come downstairs Christmas morning. She loves trains. Loves to go to the children's room at Barnes and Noble and play with the train there for hours. So when a commercial recently came on the T.V. advertising a similar train set to the one we've got her, I asked Sweetie if she'd like Santa to bring her one of those. She looked at me with the widest, most awe-struck eyes and said "yah". Cool. I can't wait to see her face Christmas morning.

This weekend we're going to put up the tree. We have an artificial one, so it takes a bit of work. So my husband will simply put it up and light it this weekend, then we'll decorate it next weekend - unless we just can't take having a naked tree in the house that long. I can't wait to see what Sweetie thinks of this tradition. In years past she hasn't shown all that much interest in the tree preparation. This year, I think she'll be totally enthralled.

Then there's her advent calendar. Last year she had one and it was great fun to have her open the doors every morning then go tell Nana what was behind today's door. "Teddy bear", "snowman" or "Santa" are examples of her one-word answers we prompted her to give. But now she's able to say "Guess what, Nana! I opened the door today and it was a snowman with birdies on his hat. hah!" So fun. Only problem is that she's much too interested in her calendar and it's a fight to make her understand that she can only open one door a day.

Yes, this holiday season is certainly going to be a ton of fun this year. Happy Birthday Month, Sweetie. We love you.