October 30 – “That wonderful time of year”

Sigh.  I guess it’s finally that time of year again.  Almost Halloween.  Thanksgiving is a month away.  Yep. The time is ripe.  For what, you may ask?  We received our first official Target Christmas ad book in the mail yesterday.  Nothing but toys.  Now that’s the real start of the Christmas season.  What child hasn’t pored through the latest toy catalogue - from the old Sears & Roebuck to the reigning champion Toys R Us?  And the approach to that important Christmas task hasn’t changed all that much, either.  I remember circling all the things I would like to have.  Of course I didn’t ever get my turn until both my brothers were finished, so there wasn’t much left to circle.  The sad lot of a middle child.  I heard Christina say yesterday that her Dad gave each child a different-colored magic marker to do his circling with.  Now that’s a wise man.  Not only does he get ideas for shopping for the kids, but he also builds up each one’s self esteem, for they know that Santa will know that “my color is yellow, not red.”  Cailyn has her own style of indicating her wants in the ad books.  She foregoes all the pencils and markers and moves right into the scissors.  You gotta appreciate that first-born philosophy – get rid of all the extraneous stuff.  After all, I’m the center of the universe.  Chris had to rein in her scissor action, though.  And she had a brilliant approach.  “You have to keep it together so Jachin and Micah and Josiah can look at all the boy stuff.”  That then led to one of Chris’ teachable moments.  She showed Cailyn how to spell the words “Boy” and “Girl” and how to spot them in the ad book.  Perfect.  That is, until it occurred to Cailyn that Jachin and Micah and Josiah probably wouldn’t want girl stuff anyway.  That meant it was surely fine for her to go and cut out what she wanted, as long as it was just for girls.  After all, she was the only girl around, right? 

She didn’t cut out everything she wanted, because when her Mom got here, she was quick to pick up the ad book.  The ensuing interchange was great:

Cailyn (pointing to an item in the ad): “This is what I want, Mommy.”

April: (in a masterful, mommy-esque response): “Save it for your Christmas list.”

Cailyn )shaking her head from side to side in a condescending way, amazed as ever at her mother’s failure to understand even the most basic of childhood truths): “It’s not for Christmas.”

April (captured by insistence, and perhaps embarrassed by her obvious lack of perception, yet doing her best to enter into the wondrous world of her daughter’s mind): “Oh.  So it’s for your birthday, then?”

Cailyn (somewhat exasperated and eager to get down to the essence of the communication): “No.  It’s for getting… Now.”

Ah.  Of course it is. Hand her the scissors.

Psalms 36:10 says, “Continue your love to those who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart.”

Father, watch over all the little guys who will be circling and cutting and listing over the next few months.  Amen.