Loot

Yesterday was the start of the Christmas frenzy in our house. Both kids got three presents: the one from the company Christmas party that was cancelled on Sunday, one from GG Roberts (Liam's came on Monday) and one from Cindy, who was sweet enough to buy for Mallory as well as Liam, even though she is not even officially in her care yet. The company's presents, some Little Tikes stuff, were decent enough, and Cindy gave us lots of books which are always a hit. But the real piece de resistance in this has been the gift from GG. And I don't mean Liam's gift. Yes, he likes his dump truck well enough. But from the moment Mallory's gift - a toy shopping cart full of plastic groceries - came in the door, Liam hasn't been able to keep his hands off of it.

I have been meaning to detail what the kids are getting for Christmas to record it for posterity. I will get to that eventually, but for now it's enough to say two things. Number one - Liam's big Christmas wish this year was a toy kitchen, and more than ever now I can't wait until Gramma and Grampa unveil it to him - I think he's going to go nuts. He just loves imitating mundane grown-up stuff like grocery shopping and (as we're about to find out) cooking. Number two - we are keeping things relatively small, since the kids themselves are small and don't need or want a lot of things. Both kids are getting two presents from Santa and two presents from Mom and Dad.

And yet this is what we found Liam doing this morning: Can you guess what he's doing? Congratulations if you figured out that he is pretending that the Christmas tree that the Santa figure on our coffee table is holding is actually a supermarket check-out scanner. He fills the cart with groceries, wheels them into the living room, unloads them all onto the coffee table-slash-conveyor belt, and then scans them on the Santa (what he terms 'paying for them') before reloading them into his cart.

A couple of months ago I saw a toy cash register and even Kaboodled it, thinking Liam would like to have it and that it would make a great Christmas present. We wound up getting him other things but now that I see him playing like this... I'm torn. Do we get him another gift? He would definitely love it. I like the idea of each kiddo having the same number of gifts to open on Christmas morning, and he definitely does not NEED it (especially since he seems to have the imagination to do without), nor does Mallory need anything else to keep the numbers even. But... it just seems like the perfect idea.

I think we will do without, at least for the time being. I am in no shape to be out braving the crowds at the malls anyway - my ankle is almost certainly sprained, swollen to the size of a tennis ball and I don't think I could drive right now. Maybe we will wait to see how things go next week and then reassess. The Santa will be out on display for at least a couple of weeks. Until he gets packed away, Liam seems to have all he needs to make for some grocery shopping fun.