Tiny Shoes

It's that time of the year. The time of the year when every TV commercial causes a child to yell "Mommy, can I have that?" We haven't even gone trick-or-treating yet, but the begging & pleading is already in full swing.

This means parents have a new partner in discipline... Santa. Yup, he is watching us. He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake! Hey, if the kids can start asking for stuff, parents might as well use it to our advantage!

So now that we've established that Santa is watching and the kids have promised to behave, it is time to make a Christmas List. The perfect tool for this arrived in our mailbox this morning... the Toys 'R Us Big Toy Book. Frankly, I wasn't that impressed with the toys in it this year. In past years I have found at least a few things worth noting, but not so much this year.

But with or without the toys the kids "really" want (ie the ones we want them to have), the Big Toy Book can be useful. I discovered this evening that the Tumbleweed wanted everything on one of the pages. Now this lead us to a discussion about how she could make a list for Santa but she would have to keep it to 5 things. That got her thinking as she went off to decide which ones were her favorites.

A little while later she was back, looking at a new page. "Mommy, can I have this?" she says pointing to a $225, very large doll house that must have been the size of our living room. What an excellent time for a lesson about money and size! We compared prices of all of the doll houses on the page, talking about "more" and "less". Then we did a little size estimating using the assumption that the girl in the picture was her same size, and talking about how tall and wide the dollhouse would be - and how we didn't have room for it. In the end she agreed that maybe the doll house wasn't quite right... "Maybe I'll put that on my list next year." Okay, so she didn't completely get it, but at least there is time for her to forget before next Christmas.

In the end, it looks like most of the things she wants have lots of little pieces. This is hard for me because I hate the idea of having toys with missing pieces - specifically dolls with missing shoes. As it is I keep close tabs on all of her Princess, Barbie, and Strawberry Shortcake little shoes. I had better step up my game because I think we will have some new contenders in the tiny shoe competition this Christmas!


Cherry Cuddler & Crepes Suzette put on a show for Ginger Snap, Rainbow Sherbet, Strawberry Shortcake, Angel Cake and Lemon Meringue.