The Practice Santa

As I sit, watching the governor of my state search desperately for the hottest toy of the season, Turboman, on the day before Christmas, in the movie "Jingle All The Way", I think about my first holiday shopping season as "Santa". (Subsequently, I'm also lamenting voting for a governor based on novelty instead of important things like political history.) Thankfully, this year was relatively easy compared to the frantic last minute shopping seen in that movie.

Although, much of my luck was due to the fact that my daughter isn't old enough to know what a Zhu Zhu Hamster is yet!

Over the past nine months, while I have joked about it on many occasions, one of the best things I've learned about being a new parent is that your first child really does act as a "practice baby" (See my post "The Practice Baby"), because you have the first few years to "get into the swing of things" and figure out your own best (and worst) practices for parenthood.

For example, this year I wanted my daughter's first Christmas to be special, even though she will have no memory of it, so my wife and I started stocking up on Christmas gifts back in October so we could spread out the purchases (and not rack up the credit cards too fast.) While it was nice to slowly amass a pile of new toys for our little one, I realized that it only worked so well because we could hide things in plain site of my daughter, because she wouldn't know the difference.

So, while shopping early helped us build an army of new playthings for our daughter (although, she has already shown more interest in the wrapping paper, rather than what's inside) and avoided a last-minute rush to Toys R Us, a new problem of storage limitations was created, which will need to be solved by next year when she will be more aware of what's going on.

Luckily, I have about 300 more days to find the solution to that problem!

And, back to the Zhu Zhu Hamsters, this year's hottest a toy, a rediculous (aren't they always) $9.99 toy hamster that makes noises and "runs" around your house; I appreciate that my daughter has no concept of what constitutes a "hot" toy and I didn't need to race around town or fight off any angry mobs to get one, and I had no intention of seeking one out.

My wife on the other hand, actually managed to get one, albeit by accident, in the process of doing her "Midnight Madness" shopping on Black Friday Eve with her friend, while my daughter and I actually slept through the night. Apparently the trick to getting the "hot" toy is to start standing in line at Toys R Us at 7 pm on Thanksgiving, and you will be guaranteed one of the last Zhu Zhu Hamsters in stock. Although we had no need or desire for the ten dollar ball of fur, my wife swooped one up and posted it on eBay for a quick profit (that helped pay for some of our Christmas shopping.)

So, even though this is really my "practice year" at playing Santa, and making sure that my daughter's first Christmas is great, I'm appreciative for the chance to figure out what works this year, and finally start some family traditions of my own.

Happy Holidays everyone!