I received my very first Christmas video card last week and bid adieu to my electronic holiday greeting virginity. The Hallmark e-card stripped me of my seasonal innocence and now I guess I should expect my mail carrier to travel a little lighter next Christmas. Apparently, holiday e-cards are the wave of the future and soon traditional Christmas greetings, like these, will go the way of the Walkman and typewriter. Say it ain’t so. How many paper holiday cards did you receive this year? I sent out nearly 90 and have received more than half that amount as we wrap … Continue reading →

“Wishing you a Merry Christmas,” those are the exact words splashed across the front of my family’s Christmas greeting card. Below it reads: “2010” and our names. Then, around the entire boldface greeting sits six lovely photos of my six-year-old. Thanks Minted.com. It would have taken me forever to sort through the hundreds of greeting card selections on the site. However, I found a way quick way to wade through the ocean of options. I clicked on “Christmas.” That one little click made a world of difference. I was not interested in sending out a card that said anything but … Continue reading →

Along with sniffles and sneezes, most kids contract a severe case of the gimmies during the month of December. My 6-year-old could easily be hospitalized for the severity of her case. The other day she whined for a good 20 minutes as she watched in utter horror as I (GASP!) wrapped a (double GASP!) Christmas present for her BFF. She recently begged Santa for the same Littlest Pet Shop set and couldn’t believe that would have the audacity to ask if she would like to help wrap the one I had purchased for her pal. Cue the drama. After the … Continue reading →

Just how tech savvy is Santa anyway? Does the big guy in the red suit really communicate via a small smartphone? Are traditional paper letters to the North Pole on the brink of extinction? Are PDFs and instant messages the preferred method of sending one’s Christmas wish list to Jolly ol’ St. Nick? Say it ain’t so. Call me old-fashioned, stodgy, or a stalwart traditionalist, but I’m not a fan of the litany of new high-tech ways kids can communicate with Santa Claus. I don’t want my daughter emailing Santa, nor do I want her faxing, tweeting, Skyping, or texting … Continue reading →

Conversation during carpool last week: My 6-year-old daughter: I can’t wait to tell Santa what I want for Christmas at the mall. My daughter’s five-year-old friend: That’s not Santa. Daughter: I know. The real Santa lives at the North Pole. Daughter’s friend: There is no Santa. He’s not real. Daughter: Yes, he is. He is real! Daughter’s friend: No he isn’t! There’s no such thing as Santa. Me: DEER!! DEER!! Did you see that deer running on the side of the highway? Who can help me find the deer? That was a close one. Christmas crisis averted… for now. Uh-huh, … Continue reading →

Is it possible to be whined to death? If so, then I need to call my priest to administer Last Rites because I am dying a slow and agonizing death by persistently whiny six-year-old. My kid wants a dog for Christmas. Yes, like Linus and Lucy’s little brother Rerun, my daughter has major puppy envy. She has been lobbying for a Labrador for the past three years. To no avail. Given that she can’t even keep track of her winter gloves, I’m thinking we’ll hold off on having her take responsibility of walking, feeding and nurturing a living, breathing, potty … Continue reading →

Now that Thanksgiving is over, the countdown to Christmas is on, and that means parents are under even more pressure to cram as much as humanly possible into a 24-hour period. For many moms and dads that means more Bah! Humbug! than fa-la-la-la-la, but such is the society-driven hoopla surrounding the birth of Christ. In addition to cooking, cleaning and coordinating school holiday concert schedules, parents must rack their brains to come up with meaningful gifts for grandparents, aunts, uncles, pizza delivery men and other major influences in their child’s life. What’s more, most of us also feel obligated to … Continue reading →

My anti-girly girl daughter doesn’t take after her mother when it comes to Christmas wishes. Whereas I begged Santa for a baby doll that I could swaddle, cuddle and dress in lacy ensembles when I was a little girl, my tomboy has her sights set firmly on a battery-powered behemoth with movable brows, hairy feet and a panache for burping. Apparently, Big Foot has made a break from the woods of the Pacific Northwest because he’s sitting in toy stores from coast-to-coast. Fisher-Price’s Imaginext Bigfoot the Monster may be on my daughter’s big Christmas present wish list, only like Kota … Continue reading →

If you have young kids at home, then you probably don’t think twice when you hear the words “Squinkies,” “Sing-a-ma-jigs,” “Zoobles,” or “Iwako erasers.” They may sound like words from a forbidden language, but they’re actually quite innocent… unless you are broke and your five-year-old is begging Santa to bring a sleigh full of Squinkies to your home on Christmas Eve. For the blissfully unaware, the aforementioned names belong to some of the top toys of Christmas 2010. For example, Squinkies are bubble-shaped toys with different themed playthings inside. You can purchase them in multi-packs or in playsets, such as … Continue reading →

Thankfully, my young daughter hasn’t begun her annual countdown to Christmas. Or as it is referred to around our home: “Honey, be careful with that Sharpie when you cross off the days on the calendar!” Such was not the case last year, when she started begging Santa for Zhu Zhu Pets at the beginning of September. This year (thankfully) my child is not obsessed with one toy in particular; rather, she wants a few toys from each aisle of Toys R Us. We’ll see if Santa delivers. In the meantime, despite being more than two months out from the official … Continue reading →