Time to Get Creative

With things being tight this year, I am trying to be creative about Christmas so that it can still be special. There was a big toy consignment sale coming up so I took advantage. I started with the idea that if I had all the money in the world, what would I want to get Tristan for Christmas. Well, I would want to build him a really great train table, so I set out to make that happen anyway. I watched Craigslist for two months looking at the lots of Thomas sets people were selling. A few days before the sale I pulled the trigger and put an offer on an awesome lot and since it had been listed for so long I offered a much lower price than was being asked and I got it!

Neil and I spent the next three days pulling out the pieces we wanted for Tristan's table and together we designed a table perfect for our little boy. I then sold the rest of the lot at the toy sale and made ALL my money back resulting in a FREE Thomas table... unheard of!!

Well, the last part of the deal was that Neil volunteered to work the breakdown of the toy sale in order to get me a higher consignor percentage. He was leaving around 6:30 this evening to head to the sale and Tristan asked me where he was going.

Me: "Daddy is going to do some work to make sure your Christmas is special. Say thank you to Daddy for a great Christmas"

Tristan got so excited and said with the most genuine voice:
"Thank you, Daddy, for the Big Kiss!"

iToddler Strikes Again

Lately Tristan has been watching Youtube videos on my iPhone. Some of the stuff is bizarre but all is harmless. A few days ago he started watching Thomas and Cars videos, but not real ones. They are videos of other kids playing with their cars. They line them up, go through all their names, drive them around and do dramatic play. At any other time in in my life I would have thought it strange that people would make these videos let alone post them on Youtube, but now I think it's brilliant! Tristan takes out the same toys he sees in the video, sets the phone down on the train table, and "plays" with the kid in the video. It's like he is setting up his own virtual play dates. What a kid!