Happy December, lovelies! Although it’s just gray and wet outside (no snow yet!), it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in our nest. A certain toddler is VERY excited about all things Christmas and Chris and I are both getting into the spirit of it as well. It’s hard not to with Wren’s infectious enthusiasm for Santa, the reindeer, Christmas cookies, decorating the tree, candy canes, stockings and just “getting started with Merry Christmas!” Yesterday I was upstairs with Phoebe and Wren was downstairs doing who-knows-what when I heard her yelling up to me. I couldn’t understand her so I came to the top of the stairs and yelled for her to come closer and tell me what she was trying to say from across the house. She said, “I SAID, Mama, Merry Christmas!!!!!!”

The problem is that a toddler’s sense of time is so vague (yesternight, lasterday) and she thinks that Santa will come and bring presents–to good boys and girls–tomorrow. Whatever tomorrow means. So I thought it would help her to understand that we’ve got a little while to wait in a fun, visual way. I made a quick trip to the dollar store (thanks, China!) today and grabbed a bunch of these tiny stockings and strung them out while she was at school. We put little numbers in them and voila! A Christmas countdown calendar. I told her that if she took a good nap, Santa would come and leave a tiny present for her in the first stocking. It worked! Let’s just see how long this will work…