An email from Kendra today contained photos of Nathaniel opening my Christmas present to him, a pretty ornament from an Alaskan artist's design. My thought is to establish the same tradition my own mother has with her grandchildren, to give him an ornament every year so that when he's all grown up and has his own first tree, there will already be many years of memories on it.I admitted to Kendra too that the added bonus of this lovely plan is that with any luck I'll never really need to know what is the must-have Christmas toy each year. Sure, he'll hate this idea when he's 10 or 12 or 14 years old (or even right now, from the looks of this photo), but so what! Deal with it! You'll like it later! Poor kid isn't even a year old and it's already Tough Love Time.
Postscript added later - I realized I didn't take a photo of it before I sent it, so I found it online. It's in the Ne'Qwa collection and is called Puffins and Wildflowers by Joanne George of Angoon.
2 comments:
Peg, I buy an ornament for everybody in the family every year. My plan is the same as yours. When the kids grow up and have their own tree, they'll have a collection of ornaments started. I buy ornaments for my husband and I so our ornament box won't seem so empty when that day comes!
This year when we were decorating the tree, I mentioned that this was my plan. The kids love it! They are 10 & 11. They looked at their ornaments with new respect and love. I could tell they were imagining that day that seems so far away to them when they will be using them to decorate their very own tree.
That's neat, Kim - I hadn't thought of needing to keep your own stock growing so that you don't give up all the cool stuff when the kids leave. :) My boss Deeta told me she'd doing this for her kids but that instead of the tree, she used them to decorate a garland-lined door each year. That changes the nature of it a little, I think, gave it a sense of independent identity as a collection. Would be pretty too, but I think I'd prefer putting them on the tree.
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