Toys for Other Tots

I've (hopefully) started a couple of holiday traditions for our family: the annual ornament, setting up the tree, and donating a toy each year to charity. The latter is still in it's formative stages - in theory we would all go together as a family and pick something out that was meaningful, but time was against us this year so in the final days before collections ended I grabbed something on my own during a rare solo shopping trip. I still tried to make it meaningful by picking a doll that reminded me of The Cupcake:

 

It was barely in our house for 24 hours before I remembered to grab it on my way to a meeting at a school that was collecting for toys for tots, but it was just enough time for TC to see her. And go completely nuclear when she was not allowed to "had it! had it!"

Guess we have some work to do on the "Christmas Spirit", eh?

The doll made it to the charity, the kid eventually recovered from her blubbery puddle on the floor, and has since started to play with her own dolls (which are more age appropriate and have less hair to destroy).

The Ornament Tradition - 2012

One of the holiday traditions we are starting is to pick out an ornament for The Cupcake each year. Something that relates to her life during the year we get it, and once she is all grown up and decorating her own tree we can give her the whole set of memories to begin her own collection of holiday decor (in theory...I'm not necessarily convinced I'll be ready to part with them, but for sure she can have them in the will).

 

Two years ago, when I was pregnant, we started with this one.

 

Last year, her first Christmas, I picked out a monkey in a ballerina costume which looked almost identical to the little monkey on her first birthday invitations, and suited our little dancing (and running, and climbing, and wiggling) monkey just fine:

 

 

This year I was pretty sure we had to find something that represented her FAVORITE guy in the whole world, and no, it's not Daddy or PaPa...

 

It's Elmo.

 

The first thing TC asks for in the morning is Elmo. Sometimes it makes me feel like a massive failure that my almost 2-year old knows a TV character so well, but I swear it was love at first sight - Elmo was one of her earliest words, PaPa P got her a stuffed Elmo doll when she was pretty little, and some days a little Elmo is just the lifesaver we both need to make it through another long day (the years are short, but the days are looooooong). This past week we volunteered at a gift wrap booth for 3 hours a day 4 different days. How, I ask you, does one entertain a toddler in an 8' X 8' space for 3 hours? Elmo makes the impossible possible. Instead of beating myself up over it, I'm going to accept, acknowledge, and heck, even celebrate it. Elmo is a big part of our life right now.

 

This was the best likeness I could find of the officially licensed ornaments. We wanted to be sure the money went to Sesame Workshop, without whom I could never get dressed or pee during the day. I like the idea of getting a glass ornament each year, while she can't play with them, it will feel like more of an heirloom to hand over eventually.

 

Here's hoping you're building family traditions of your own today & all year round...