Christmas was a little difficult for me this year. I've struggled with the concept of Santa and whether we should....the Elf on the Shelf movement.....and how to handle adding more toys to a mix that is already overflowing.
I think the solutions we came up with all of those concerns turned out pretty well.
Santa - while I have worked VERY hard to keep from lying to Rachel in any capacity....even insofar as to tell her the truth knowing it would result in a complete meltdown at a toddler....I've tried to stick with the truth. And it's been tough. So this Santa business has left me feeling uneasy. However....I'm allowing her to be a normal child and experience the excitement of Christmas in the same way that Jason and I did growing up. Looking back I'm thankful my parents let me enjoy that. Now I hope next year she asks if Santa's real and I can tell her the truth. But we'll see. Regardless....I have to remind myself that we're not lying to her for our enjoyment and I have every intention of telling her the truth, so it's okay for now.
Elf on the Shelf....I won't dive into this. What I thought would be innocent fun is apparently being harshly criticized in some circles and some of their arguments are valid. Regardless......instead of this being used as a tool to enforce good behavior, I intend to allow it to be fun and view the Elf as a guardian "elf" sent by Santa to encourage more fun during the season. Rachel is well behaved enough that we don't need a 3rd party to encourage better behavior. Some households do. So I carried through to the end of the year Albert the elf and will be weighing this year whether or not we'll do it again in 2015.
The toys. Ok. Let's be realistic. We've downsized and I feel that as soon as I get rid of a nice pile of toys they are instantly backfilled with birthday or every day gifts. Since there are no other grandkids on Jason's side of the family right now I know that everyone LOVES to buy her stuff. I do too! And I don't want to deny them that blessing.
But we're getting ready to move into an even smaller space and we do NOT have room for anything else. Rachel rotates through nearly every single toy she has on an almost weekly basis. There is nothing left for me to get rid of. And more importantly, I want to set a realistic expectation. Could we have placed dozens of gifts under the tree for her? Absolutely. Did I want to? Vehemently, yes. But one of the things that is starting to get under my skin about Christmas is the sheer commercialization of everything. So I want to set a very realistic expectation now. Christmas is a special time of year and presents are super fun. However, she doesn't need to be showered with a ton of gifts. Instead, Jason and I bought her one big gift that we knew she'd enjoy and encouraged others to help us with it. It's a leap pad tablet that functions somewhat similarly and look like an iPad. (in fact, that's what she calls it. Meh, semantics). So she didn't feel cheated, I wrapped this present about 6 times. Ah the joy of being in shipping and having a ton of different sized boxes laying around!
She instantly curled up with Jason and he taught her how to play with it. (We'd already set it up so she had a profile and was connected to the Wi-Fi).
The games are expensive so we asked family to purchase more games for her than more toys. Did she get a bunch of toys from people? Yes. Thankfully small and not noisy ones!
The "iPad" has been a good gift. I've brought it with us so he can play with it while we work on the house. The games are fun, educational, and entertaining. She's starting to learn how to take photos with it and search for things on the internet (which is VERY limited and I appreciate!)
All in all, I think we had a good Christmas!
I think the solutions we came up with all of those concerns turned out pretty well.
Santa - while I have worked VERY hard to keep from lying to Rachel in any capacity....even insofar as to tell her the truth knowing it would result in a complete meltdown at a toddler....I've tried to stick with the truth. And it's been tough. So this Santa business has left me feeling uneasy. However....I'm allowing her to be a normal child and experience the excitement of Christmas in the same way that Jason and I did growing up. Looking back I'm thankful my parents let me enjoy that. Now I hope next year she asks if Santa's real and I can tell her the truth. But we'll see. Regardless....I have to remind myself that we're not lying to her for our enjoyment and I have every intention of telling her the truth, so it's okay for now.
Elf on the Shelf....I won't dive into this. What I thought would be innocent fun is apparently being harshly criticized in some circles and some of their arguments are valid. Regardless......instead of this being used as a tool to enforce good behavior, I intend to allow it to be fun and view the Elf as a guardian "elf" sent by Santa to encourage more fun during the season. Rachel is well behaved enough that we don't need a 3rd party to encourage better behavior. Some households do. So I carried through to the end of the year Albert the elf and will be weighing this year whether or not we'll do it again in 2015.
The toys. Ok. Let's be realistic. We've downsized and I feel that as soon as I get rid of a nice pile of toys they are instantly backfilled with birthday or every day gifts. Since there are no other grandkids on Jason's side of the family right now I know that everyone LOVES to buy her stuff. I do too! And I don't want to deny them that blessing.
But we're getting ready to move into an even smaller space and we do NOT have room for anything else. Rachel rotates through nearly every single toy she has on an almost weekly basis. There is nothing left for me to get rid of. And more importantly, I want to set a realistic expectation. Could we have placed dozens of gifts under the tree for her? Absolutely. Did I want to? Vehemently, yes. But one of the things that is starting to get under my skin about Christmas is the sheer commercialization of everything. So I want to set a very realistic expectation now. Christmas is a special time of year and presents are super fun. However, she doesn't need to be showered with a ton of gifts. Instead, Jason and I bought her one big gift that we knew she'd enjoy and encouraged others to help us with it. It's a leap pad tablet that functions somewhat similarly and look like an iPad. (in fact, that's what she calls it. Meh, semantics). So she didn't feel cheated, I wrapped this present about 6 times. Ah the joy of being in shipping and having a ton of different sized boxes laying around!
The games are expensive so we asked family to purchase more games for her than more toys. Did she get a bunch of toys from people? Yes. Thankfully small and not noisy ones!
The "iPad" has been a good gift. I've brought it with us so he can play with it while we work on the house. The games are fun, educational, and entertaining. She's starting to learn how to take photos with it and search for things on the internet (which is VERY limited and I appreciate!)
All in all, I think we had a good Christmas!
No comments:
Post a Comment