'Tis The Season

I had high hopes for a season full of old and new holiday traditions to share with Ben but that's not quite how its working out. But thank goodness we still have over a week before Christmas so we can try a few more!

Christmas Tree-Our first success was getting the tree up and decorating it. Ben had so much fun! He just stuffed all his "toddler friendly" ornaments into the tree it was really cute. His favorite is his new firetruck ornament which he can't decided where to put it so it gets moved often!

24 Christmas Books-I saw on Pinterest last year about the tradition of wrapping 24 Christmas books up and each night unwrapping one and reading it. I knew Ben was way too young last year so I was really looking forward to doing it this year. This summer I started collecting Christmas books from thrift stores and surprisingly it didn't take me to long to get enough! I wrapped all of the books and put them in a basket and was so excited about our new tradition. We showed Ben the basket and told him to pick one and he did and opened it and then tried to open the rest of them. We explained that we can only unwrap one book per night but he just wasn't getting it. So now the basket of books sits up high but he asks each night to unwrap his book but he's not always interested in reading them. So I think this tradition in mostly a success!

And now for the failures...

Elf on a Shelf-this was the first year we attempted to start this tradition and I think Ben is just a tad to young but he did manage to name him. Vince and I randomly said names to Ben telling him we need to name Elfie and the only name he ever said back to us was Elfie. So it was decided that the elf's name would be Elfie. Ben had no interest in ready the book about Elfie so I just stuck him on this wooden reindeer to keep him safe out of Ben's reach. Ben would go over and check on Elfie sitting on the "neigh neigh" which in Ben language is a horse (he is having a hard time distinguishing between a horse and a reindeer). Vince moved him to a new spot that night so Ben could look for him but Ben kinda freaked out the next morning and wanted Elfie back on the neigh neigh so now Elfie hasn't moved from the reindeer.

Gingerbread House-Ben was so excited to build a house made out of cookies and then decorate it with candy! So after his nap one day we set up shop at the kitchen table and got to work. Ben was taste testing all the various candies and I was building the structure. All was going well until we started to decorate the house and it all came crashing down. Ben's face was priceless and he kept saying "oh no oh no". I tried to salvage the house but it wasn't looking good so I gave up and Ben started eating the house! Oh well we still had fun and that's all that matters right?



And finally our trip to go see Santa. Ben kept asking to go to Santa's house so I was kind of hoping this year would go better than last years but nope. It was worse than last year. Tears, tears and more tears.