Christmas Countdown

The Christmas season is upon us! And this year, Adelaide actually remembers a little bit about Christmas, and she is super, SUPER excited for all of it!

This will be our fourth Christmas as parents, and after such extensive experience, here’s what I’ve determined about the Christmas holiday with young kiddos:

 

 

Christmas with a baby is special.

Christmas with a 1-year-old is fun.

Christmas with a 2-year-old is exciting.

Christmas with a 3-year-old is MAGICAL!

 

This year, the MAGIC of Christmas is coming alive through Adelaide. She is fully bought-in to Santa Claus, and goes absolutely nuts anytime she sees anything resembling, or referencing Santa.

We visited Santa at the mall, the Monday before Thanksgiving (I like to avoid the crowds) but as expected, Adelaide was totally freaked out and didn’t want to go anywhere near Santa. Luckily, we were the only people there, so we got to spend 20 solid minutes with Santa, all by ourselves.

Adelaide was comfortable talking to Santa, so they got to have a good conversation. She told him that she was three years old, and he commented on how much bigger she was than the last time he saw her 😉 She told him all about dressing up as Tinker Bell for Halloween, and he thought that was a good costume. He asked her what she wanted for Christmas and without hesitation she answered, “a kitchen and kitchen toys”. He asked her if she liked to help mommy in the kitchen, and she said, “yes”. So Santa asked if she would bake him some cookies, and leave them out for him on Christmas Eve. She said she would make him some red cookies with white tops. I guess I have that fun project to look forward to!

Adelaide wanted nothing to do with standing near, or sitting next to, or on Santa, so I let her hang out with mommy while we put Cadence on his lap for a photo. Here’s the little gem we captured, moments before she burst into tears. Oh the holidays are so much fun! LOL!

Anyhow, since Adelaide has been so excited about Christmas, it was absolutely necessary to create some kind of advent, or countdown calendar.

I wanted it to be something Adelaide and I could make together, so I decided on a good, old fashioned, paper chain.

We started by picking out red, green and white construction paper, and then painting various designs on them with red, green and white paint.

Once the paint dried, we cut the paper in to 2″ x 11″ strips.

The most memorable advent calendars of my youth involved some sort of activity—reading parts of a story, or getting a piece of candy, for example. I decided to create a list of activities and write one on each link in the chain. I made sure to put the activities in order, so they would correctly correspond to weekends vs. weekdays. It’d be a little difficult to “Visit Christmas in the Park as a Family” when Daddy’s at work!

I gave Adelaide the glue stick and she helped me assemble the paper chain. I love the finished product!

Adelaide got to take off the first link on Saturday. It read, “Decorate the Christmas tree”. Since we’ll be traveling for the holidays, we won’t be getting a full-size tree, but we have two small decorative trees that will serve as our family Christmas trees this year. I gave Adelaide one of them and all of the soft or un-breakable ornaments we have and let her go to town. She loved it and has redecorated her tree everyday since then.

Sunday morning, she woke up and took off her second link, which read, “Get hot cocoa with Daddy”. So, for breakfast that morning, Matt and Adelaide headed off to the coffee shop for a little Daddy-Daughter date. It was a very special treat for everyone!!

This morning’s link read “Write a letter to Santa”. I helped with the writing part, but she dictated, and colored. Can’t wait to send this off to the North Pole! I hear Santa will write back if we send the letter early enough 😉

I’m looking forward to documenting everyday of Adelaide’s Christmas countdown adventure!