Christmas Confusion

"It's the most wonderful time of the year..."

I love Christmas. Love. Love. Love.
We love Christmas so much that we got married in December.

Weee!!! But that's a story for another day.

This is Pablo's third Christmas. Now that he's a bit older and wiser, I'm being extremely careful about what I want to teach him about Christmas. He understands and remembers more than he lets on which is a little scary at times because he might pick up something that I will regret later on. (Gah!!! The pressure of it all!)

I don't want him to associate Christmas with gifts and excessiveness. I love how his face lights up when there's something for him to open. Yesterday morning he noticed the gifts I had brought home from school. He asked permission to open them, then gleefully ran to his play mat to sit beside his sleeping daddy. Then in all seriousness, he ripped the wrapper off and with a flourish, presented the unwrapped gift with a loud "Tah-dan!" This went on a couple more times, always ending with a loud "Ha-ha! Mama look!"

It's really the process more than the gift itself. Eric has mentioned wrapping several boxes with the "real gift" in the final one. I've floated the idea of putting a limit to the number of gifts we should get him.

We've been pretty good about not getting Pablo too many toys. We like to encourage his imagination so most of his toys are geared in that direction. We also rotate his toys and keep stuff that have been ignored for a week or so (it also helps to keep the clutter at a manageable level). He's still in his throwing-phase and for several months we had a moratorium on purchasing new items. It all works out because the whole house is his playground and the kitchen in particular is filled with loads of playthings.

But then it's Christmas and in the Philippines, Christmas starts pretty early. I began Christmas shopping for nephews and nieces several months ago and it seems a little weird buying for other people's kids and not my own. Which leaves me extremely confused. So confused that I can't seem to decorate our house and all we have so far is a little wreath on our front door.

What to do, what to do. I have to find a way out of this conundrum before New Year sets in.