A Few Early Gifts

I'm having some blogging technical difficulties that I'm trying to sort out, but I think this post should work.

I am so excited to start some Christmas traditions with Brennan. We put our tree up Friday morning and while B napped that afternoon, we brought up a few surprises for him. I knew this year when we brought out the decorations I wanted to already have some goodies in B's stocking - stuff he could enjoy during the Christmas season. His stocking had two pairs of Christmas pajamas and a snowman shirt. We also brought up the Little People Nativity set we got on clearance after Christmas last year. We also put out the Elf on a Shelf book given to us by Mrs. Hamilton last year. And yes, these pictures are after his nap on Friday and he's still in pjs. He wore pjs all day since we didn't leave the house. 

He immediately loved the nativity set. He knew exactly who baby Jesus was and has enjoyed playing with it since Friday. He also liked his pjs. He picked up the Elf on a Shelf book, but I was surprised how uninterested he was since he loves books.

I found this great letter on Pinterest that does a nice job of incorporating the elf, Santa, and Jesus together. Brennan knows who Santa is and likes to sit on his lap at the mall, but we haven't told him anything else about him. He doesn't think Santa is brining gifts and he doesn't know anything about Santa's naughty or nice lists. Since he didn't want to read the book, I simply explained to him that an elf was going to show up at the house to make sure he was making good choices. That night, the doorbell rang and there was a present on the front porch - the elf and the letter. Here's a link to the original letter. I modified mine a bit to work for only having one kid. We are doing the whole putting the elf (Kyle named him Buddy) in a different spot each morning so B can look for it. But we aren't doing the whole "no touching" thing because I'm not able to handle B whining about that each morning. On Saturday, Buddy was just sitting in the Christmas tree. The past two mornings, Brennan has found him and immediately moved him back to the Christmas tree. He has already said, "Make Buddy cry" a few times when he's made a bad choice, so he seems to understand the elf's purpose. We'll just keep our main focus on the true reason for the season.

Can't wait to start more traditions this Christmas season.