Traditions

I read an encouraging blog post the other day about moms creating traditions for their small children. I have a small child, so I find things like that terribly interesting these days. This time last year, I didn't worry about creating traditions with Claire; she was too little to know or care about it. This year, she is still too young to fully understand much of the Christmas season, but she is definitely able to take in quite a lot. So, I've been trying to thoughtfully and carefully sort through all of the stuff that we could be doing and choose the things that I think will be meaningful to us, teach something to Claire, and prove to be sustainable. We've landed on a few activities that I think we can maintain through the years, knowing that other things can be worked in for different seasons of our life. 

The first thing we knew we wanted to do was go through the Advent readings suggested for The Jesus Storybook Bible. We read a "STO-WEE!" with Bear every night anyway and are Church calendar followers, so this seemed like a perfect tradition to put into place. I found the reading list posted online, and we do one reading each night. She is getting more and more into STO-WEE! time, and we are enjoying watching her connect with the process. We also have an Advent calendar (like, a REAL Advent calendar...the kind that celebrates/counts down to Jesus' birthday. Not just a fancy countdown system to the day that we open presents. Those jokers are all over Pinterest, and I take issue with the fact that they are called "Advent" calendars when they have no connection with celebrating the advent of Jesus. Sheesh.) that we updated daily. So far, we have two stars in place. I think tonight might be an angel. We'll see...

We also knew that we wanted Claire to participate in giving each Christmas (not just to family and friends). To that end, we decided that we will help her pack a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child every year, as her way of giving to children on an international level. Obviously, this year that meant that I packed a shoebox for her. I had a lot of fun with it. I'm looking forward to when she can give her opinion on what should be in the box (heaven knows she has LOTS of opinions). 

We also want to make a habit of helping her to give locally each year. This year, we chose Salvation Army. I think she will enjoy putting money in the buckets, so we are going to pull out the amount we want to give and let her stuff bills into buckets around town. The organization we give to may change each year, but Salvation Army is it this year.

Those three things are the things we decided on as our yearly activities. There are definitely other things that we're doing to be merry and bright, like watching Eloise at Christmastime and Curious George's Christmas movie, decorating (and undecorating and decorating and undecorating) the lower levels of the tree, and listening to Christmas music. She'll be joining us for the Boswell Family Christmas Eve party (dressed in her Who costume, of course) and I may even let her eat some sugar this year.

I'm interested to see how our Christmas traditions evolve over the years, but for now, that's what we are doing. It's working, so I'll keep it.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and were able to celebrate with the ones you love. I, certainly, have a ridiculous amount to be thankful for, and the 10-hour (each way) car ride to Alabama wasn't nearly enough time to list them all!