Letter to Santa

Alex has really got into writing his Santa list this year.  Things all began back in October when the Christmas catalogs started arriving.  He spent hours with the catalogs and a Sharpie circling the toys he wanted.  We talked extensively about not being greedy and instead only circling the few toys that he REALLY wanted to ask Santa for, but he still ended up circling so many things.  To help remind him not to be greedy, I suggested he work on writing his letter to Santa.  Knowing that writing a Santa letter at 4 years old is a labor-intensive process, I knew that only the top toys would make the list.

We've been spending quite a bit of time at Target lately strolling the toy aisles so that Alex can get see and touch the toys he's contemplating putting on his list.  After about 3 weeks in the making, he finished his list.  It's been a lot of hard work.  He'd ask us how to spell words letter-by-letter and then he'd refer to his alphabet placemat to see how to write them.  For the letters he wasn't sure about, he'd use his Leapfrog Fridge Phonics game and put different letters in the game and wait for it to sing the song (for example, R says "ruh" so he knew the letter he put in was an R).  I was really proud of his trouble-shooting creativity.

Finally, this week he announced that his list was finished.  With no prompting from me, he got the tape from the drawer and taped his list to the fireplace "so Santa will see it as soon as he comes down the chimney".  I guess he figures that with the US Postal Service on the verge of bankruptcy he needed to take serious matters like these into his own hands?  I've got to give him credit for perseverance and problem solving.  Now, hopefully Santa comes through on a couple of his requests.

Translation: Transformer, DS, Despicable Me Wii game and movie, Lion King, Darth Vader helmet

In the meantime, here's a cute picture from Alex's Thanksgiving Feast at preschool (his class was dressed as Indians):