Although Christmas, in it's common form as a holiday of good cheer and gift-giving, means absolutely nothing to an 18-month old, we can't help ourselves, but give in to the spirit of the season and prepare a few presents for Mason. Unlike some families who seems to prefer quantity over quality and kids who seem to value to volume of wrapping paper and plastic produced from underneath a tree, we decided to get Mason a few things that he "needs," though we are fully aware that this term is irrelevant at this age.
As parents, we are starting to learn to watch the cues and the interests of our child in order to direct our choices. Soon, I'm sure we will be debating swim lessons over gymnastics, but for now we are deciding if colored pencils and non-toxic paints are a better choice over socks and mittens.
A few months ago as we were house-hunting with Mason in tow, we noticed that he took a fancy to this little plastic kid-sized Adirondack chair and thought, hmm...that would be a nice idea...and Michael in his infinite woodworking capacity decided to build one. A $10 downloaded building plan, pine board, and low-VOC shellac later and we have a mini-chair that Mason adores. And of course we couldn't wait until Christmas (nor could we fly it across country), so he has it a little early.
We've also noticed his penchant for drumming. Ok, so maybe it is a universal trait of babies to bang, hit, drop, bonk, slap, or beat anything that has the least amount of sound emitted from it, but we thought there might be some musical ability hiding in there (especially given the fact that he has piano-bass-guitar-trumpet-french horn-banjo-drum-singing blood running through his veins. A few weeks ago I went out to use a 3-year old gift card from Ten Thousand Villages and it finally hit me what I could redeem it for...a drum! And not just any old drum, but an authentic, third-world, sustainably-harvested, economically-supported, grassroots-developed drum. I found a cone-shaped bongo drum from Kenya that stands about 20 inches tall and is the perfect height for baby music-making. Though the goat skin exterior was initially questionable (Has it been properly sanitized? Are some weird kenyan goat mites still living on it? Can eboli be transmitted via dead carcasses? Is it really goat skin, because it looks awfully like dog?) I decided to go for it, again bringing it home with little fanfare and giving it to Mason a few weeks early. He was in love instantly.
And I realized that what really counts is that we invested some time, thought, and love into our gifts. Even though they were given a few weeks early (to be fair Michael got his boots and I got one of my pillow early, too), they were given in the spirit of the season. Now if only we can be that purposeful in future years he might understand the meaning of Christmas.
