What Your Toddler Really Wants For Christmas
While roaming the aisles of a big-box toy store the other day, I realized that my 18 month old daughter could care less about 99% of the stuff for sale. I know what she wants for Christmas and it’s not a dolly that sits on the toilet or a pink plastic household appliance. Here’s a list of what every toddler really wants to see under the tree:
- A Kleenex box. The biggest one you can find, with the cardboard piece already ripped off the top. Free reign to pull the tissues out when she pleases, shred into tiny pieces and fling around the house.
- A box of Christmas oranges to dump, line up and move in and out of the box to her heart’s content.
- A toothbrush to chew as much as she wants, swirl in the toilet and poke her big brother with.
- Her own roll of tape. She can rip the tape out over and over with no one saying, “Give it back to mommy, please. Give it back to mommy” and prying it out of her tiny hands. A roll of wrapping paper from the dollar store will also go over well.
- A family sized box of rice to spread over every room of the house, just for fun. She already knows how to do this. She learned it last week in Sunday School.
- A Lego set for her to step on and throw against the wall while laughing with glee.
- An extra $10 to put towards the water bill so she can play at the kitchen sink and yell, “water! water!” as she pours, stirs and splashes joyfully.
- An expensive fabric angel decoration to hug and kiss with spaghetti-sauce-stained hands & face.
- An old plate to take to the cement floor in the garage, lift high over her head, and smash to smithereens.
Ah…the perfect Christmas.
Win Prizes With Momma’s 12 Days of Christmas!
Today marked the kick-off of Momma Be Thy Name’s 12 Days of Christmas special…12 days, 12 posts by 12 people with some awesome prizes! I’m pretty stoked because on Friday, December 14th, my first guest post (ever) will be featured.
The best news is that there are prizes involved. Any time you comment on a post during the 12 days, you will be entered to win an Elf Pack and a grand prize. (You can comment once per day.)
Elf Pack:
- $100 mpix Gift Certificate
- $25 Macy’s Gift Card
- $15 iTunes Gift Card
- Arthur Christmas on DVD
- iHome Portable Rechargeable Mini Speakers (If you’re extra nice, you could get the Glow Tunes LED Color-Changing speakers!)
- Godiva Chocolatier Ultimate Dessert Truffles
- Hallmark Keepsake 2012 Snowflake Ornament
- Yankee Candle Sparkling Snow 14.5 oz. Jar Candle
Grand Prize:
- A Keurig Platinum Plus Series Brewer
- 64 K-Cups variety
- Filter
- My K-Cup (for any type of ground coffee you’d like)
So follow the link below and start commenting! Make sure to come and visit me on Friday. 🙂
Related articles
- Momma’s 12 Days of Christmas Presents A Honey-Do Christmas by Deviant Feather (mommabethyname.com)
Random Acts of Christmas Kindness (RACK)
Lindt chocolate teddy bears (Photo credit: foodishfetish)
I saw a wonderful idea on a friend’s Facebook page. During the month of December, she is doing some Random Acts of Christmas Kindness (RACK) with her children. What a great way to teach young children that the Christmas season is about more than Santa and presents.
My son is almost five. He is at such a curious, open-minded age that I knew he would probably be receptive to trying some RACK. Our first try was to buy our Wal-Mart cashier a chocolate bear. His first reaction when I suggested putting it in the cart was “Why? Why, Mommy? Why can’t I have one too?” I was actually pleasantly surprised when he didn’t argue for very long and realized how happy he could make someone else by giving instead of getting.
When we got to the check-out, B eyed the cashier and asked, “Mommy, is that who we are giving the bear to?” When I said yes he was all excited. I thought he may get shy when it was time to give her the bear, but he stretched out his little arm, gave a big smile and said, “Here! We bought this for you!” She was so surprised and grateful. She said it was a change from what she usually sees happening in the check-out line. We’ve had plenty of days in line where B is asking for things so it was pretty awesome for me to see.
In the car on the way home we had an amazing conversation about thinking of other ways to help other people when they are least expecting it.
My next challenge is to encourage B to spend all of our Shopper’s Drug Mart points to buy toys for children who use the Mustard Seed ministry in our city. We shall see what that brings.
My challenge to you is to try a few RACK with your children. If you don’t have children, do it on your own. Share this post if you’d like to spread more Christmas cheer around!
Related articles
- Building Traditions of Kindness In Kinders (teacherlingo.com)
Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons
Do you remember the very first time someone threw an armful of leaves on your head? My daughter thought it was the funniest thing ever.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections (On Parenting)
You know you are in full-blown toddler-mode when “cleaning” the house involves just throwing things toward the room they belong in.
Catch 22
Starting a blog about things that go wrong while raising children is so much fun. I’m constantly having wild experiences with my children that provide the best writing material I’ve ever had.
The irony of the whole thing is that I literally have about one hour of free time each evening to do what I want to do. So it’s the time of my life with the most to write about but the time of my life that I have absolutely no time to write it.
Our little family has been through some real ups and downs. Right now we are in a great big “up”- one of those times when life is so sweet and wonderful that you almost don’t want to breathe because you know things can change in an instant. One of those times that I feel my heart could burst at any moment with awe at the grace I feel to have such blessings surrounding me.
It’s the ultimate catch-22: the little blessings that wake me up at all hours of the night, keep me running, stepping on Lego, cleaning up stinky messes, playing referee and leave me begging for solitude some days, are also the little blessings that make me love in a way I didn’t realize was possible. In parenting the highs are high and the lows are low. If you don’t have the lows you can’t appreciate the highs in the same way.
Multitask-a-rama
This morning at around 7:30 a.m. I suddenly realized that I don’t think it is humanly possible for me to multitask anymore than I already do. During one moment in time this morning, I was:
- googling “symptoms of whooping cough in children”
- reading four text messages from my best friend
- brushing my teeth
- trying to stop little A from swirling her dolly in the toilet
- planning supper in my head
- figuring out what time we needed to leave the house
- putting my foot on the toilet seat to stop little A from swirling her dolly in the toilet (again) 🙂
Try it one day. Stop to think about how many things you are doing at once. Make a list and post it here if it’s interesting (or funny)! Related articles
- Only 2% of People Can Multitask Successfully [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)
p.s. No one has whooping cough.
4.5 years of sleep deprivation (Murphy’s Law #3b)
Getting two children to sleep, stay asleep and sleep past 5:00 a.m. is an Olympic event in our house.
- Once your darling toddler is sleeping through the night again (after a brief, 9 month hiatus of getting 16 teeth), she wakes at 5:00 a.m. for a diaper change. This isn’t much to complain about if you usually rock her for 2 hours in the middle of the night, but still, 5:00 a.m. is early.
- Your toddler quickly falls back to sleep, at which point your 4-year-old immediately wakes up and asks “is it time to wake up, Momma?” in that really loud, awake-sounding voice that means he is definitely not falling back to sleep. You know the voice. Resistance is futile.
- You try everything under the sun to
forceencourage said child to stay in bed: night lights that change colour at parents’ preferred wake time, numbers printed above a digital clock with a hopeful “7:00”, begging, pleading. These things work sometimes with a singleton. It is all a little more complicated when there is an eagle-eared, sleeping toddler on the other side of a paper-thin wall. - At every 5:00 a.m. wake up you promise yourself that you will go to bed early that night. Even if you dragged yourself around like a wet blanket all day, you will get an instant second wind the minute everyone is asleep. You stay up way too late, wake at 5:00 the next day and the pattern repeats itself over and over.
- On the day you have a babysitter booked and really, really want your toddler to have a good nap she won’t. She will have trouble getting to sleep. You will need to change her diaper two extra times. The minute she is finally sleeping your preschooler will run up the stairs, yelling, “Momma? Momma? Where ARE you?” and the little one’s eyes will burst open.
- When your youngest is between 12 and 18 months old and (some days) you manage to function somewhat normally, you will sit in the rocking chair, hum Ave Maria and stare at the beautiful, precious child in your arms. That vanilla-cupcake baby smell, the soft hair, velvety-smooth cheeks and tiny baby breaths make it all worthwhile. 🙂
You may also like:
https://murphymusthavehadkids.com/2012/06/24/oh-bedtime/
https://murphymusthavehadkids.com/2012/06/21/sleeping-through-the-night-murphys-law-3/
Go to the bathroom alone (Murphy’s Law #13)
On the first birthday I celebrated after becoming a mother, I received a card with a picture like this on the front:
Inside the card was written, “Go to the bathroom alone.”
Ah, the bathroom. To someone without young children the bathroom is a sort of sanctuary. A quiet place. A place to pour a hot bath, examine gray hairs, read a magazine.
When there are toddlers and preschoolers in the house, the picture changes. On a good day, a mother will close the door and spend 18 seconds doing what she needs to do before the first knock comes. On most days in our house, the door is wide open and there are two small people watching my every move. In B’s words, “Momma, whyyyy are you putting that stuff on your eyes? It makes you look mad. Momma, whyyyy do we need toilet paper? Momma, whyyyy do we need to go pee?” And on and on.
Little A is mostly interested in trying to swirl her toothbrush in the toilet. Oh, and pointing at any water on the floor and making sure I know it is “wet!” She loves to empty out the baskets under the bathroom sink. The other day it took me 10 minutes to find my mascara. It was under my bed with some deodorant and a soother.
A few “Murphy’s Laws” of the bathroom:
- The minute a mother gets in the shower, madness enters the house. Fully clothed children will suddenly run down the hall naked. Dogs will bark. The doorbell may even ring. Children who were innocently eating Cheerios and watching Toopy and Binoo will suddenly start screaming and freaking out.
- The morning a mother allows herself a few extra minutes of sleep is the morning she finds her four-year old coated in penaten cream. Said four-year old will find the only tin of penaten cream left in the house, which is stored on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet.
- Leaving your toddler’s diaper off for a few seconds always results in some sort of accident. Our new house has already been christened 3 times by my darling daughter.
I know there are more but my brain is tired from chasing children around the cul-de-sac, picking tubs of blackberries and singing 500 Miles five hundred times at bedtime.
What happens when you try to go to the bathroom alone? 🙂
Fear and Bumbos
High Alert! Breaking News! Yesterday new parents around North America were tweeting, facebooking and texting in a panic. No, it was not a child abduction or abuse case. No, it was not a report on children being mistreated, starved or locked in a basement. It was just another Bumbo recall.
Before I had Brother B I marched out and bought a brand-new green Bumbo. That’s what you do now when you have a baby: buy expensive plastic things that will make you a good parent. The Bumbo helps your baby sit up before they can sit alone. The typical baby uses it for about 3.5 hours over the course of a few weeks. In 2007 a “recall” was issued because too many parents were using the Bumbo on the table or counter. Babies were falling out. Duh. The “recall” involved putting a sticker on the Bumbo that basically said, “Don’t be an idiot put the Bumbo on the table.”
Every since I was young it has bothered me that you need a license to have a dog or cat but anybody can have a baby.
The latest recall of 4 million Bumbos is due to a few injuries. A couple of parents left their child in the Bumbo (either on a table or off). The children wriggled around, fell out, and banged their heads. They got hurt. A no-brainer. Not a reason to cause a panic and give new mothers yet one more thing to worry about.
Let’s call a spade a spade. Bring out the helmets and the bubblewrap. Close the curtains, lock the doors and keep those children safe!
Related articles
- Bumbo recall a parental failure (o.canada.com)
murphy must have had kids 