It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Well, not exactly - it isn't really looking like Christmas at all.

However, for our little planner Katie Anne, June is not to early too start planning for Christmas!

(And I LOVE that she's such a think-ahead planner... that's Mommy's baby right there.)

How is she planning ahead?  Well, she has gone through the entire new Fisher Price toy magazine and made decisions about almost each toy.  It took her several days of looking through the catalog to make up her mind about things.  The decision tree breaks down like this:

3 Toys that Katie Anne wants for Christmas

3 Toys that Baby Saunders wants for Christmas

1 Toy they both want to share for Christmas

Toys neither of them want for Christmas

Here's what's what...

Toys that Katie Anne wants: Snap 'n Style Dolls, the Victorian doll house, and a twin baby doll care set

Toys that Baby Saunders wants: Thomas the Train stuff, a plastic tricycle, and bath toys

Toys they both want to share: A Little People Animals/ABC set

Toys neither of them want for Christmas: everything else in the catalog  :)

Katie Anne's not done ... just deciding is not enough.  She also knows that she must communicate these desires with Santa Claus.  So, she carefully tore each page out of the magazine, and now she calls that "mail" for Santa Claus.  She has put the pages with the items they want in the "Santa Claus mailbox" ... which happens to be sliding them under the linen closet door.  See the mail peeking out?

I pulled out the pages for documentation purposes - here's the mail that tells Santa what they want:

The mail that tells Santa what they don't want is stacked neatly on Katie Anne's nightstand:

 (We can't throw it away because she wants to mail it later, after he's gotten the mail that says what they do want.)

Then, after a few days, I noticed that this page - which is the animal/ABC set that both kids want to share - was sitting on the corner of the kitchen counter next to my keys, to-do list, etc ... basically, where all my "actionable" items are kept.

When I asked Katie Anne why she'd left that page there instead of putting it in the Santa Claus mailbox, she said, "Well, I thought we'd already asked Santa Claus for a lot of fings, so maybe this could be a toy that you and Daddy get us for Christmas.  So, I put that mail there for you."

That kid cracks me up.  

I have a funny feeling that she and Baby Saunders will be getting the animal/ABC set from Mommy and Daddy this year.  What about the stuff from the Santa mail?  I can't say - you'll have to ask Santa!