The Modern Christmas List

The highlight of the week so far was picking up our Christmas tree.  We've had an artificial tree for the last few years and have loved it (no mess, perfect size and shape, free).  But of course that didn't make it in the New York pile when we were packing.  It's safely packed away in storage in California.  So we wandered to the end of our block where two hippie kids from Canada living out of their VW bus were selling trees in front of the CVS pharmacy.  Easy peasy.

As we were carrying the tree down the block back to our apartment, Holden said that this is his first live tree.  It isn't, but we've had the fake one long enough that I can see how he wouldn't remember life before it.  I was happy for him to finally be experiencing a real tree, even if it was bought in front of a pharmacy and not cut down in a beautiful Christmas tree farm.

Christmas lists are no longer created with pen and paper around here.  I'm not sure they ever were.  But this year we did something different.  We headed to our local independent toy store, West Side Kids, and I handed the kids my phone.  They snapped away at what they wanted so that I could add them to their Amazon wish lists.

I'm guessing at 8 years old, this may be Ella's last doll.

All things spaceship.

And this ugly guy even made the list.

I found the following start of a blog post that I had written a few weeks ago and forgot all about in my drafts folder.  

********

After watching Holden painfully, slowly read the first two Hardy Boys books (with MUCH bribing), I discovered graphic novels.  In case you're like me and had a shiver run down your spine when you saw the 'Graphic Novel' section in the children's section of the library, assuming (understandably) that there would be naked women in them, fear not.

A graphic novel is a comic book.

And guess what?  Comic books are a perfect match for the attention span of a six year-old boy.  There are LOTS of pictures and you get to turn the page every few seconds.  No more trudging through a chapter over several days.  And there's actually some reading going on and these days, often good stories being told.  The problem is that he flies through them so fast that I'm at the library every day.  I can't keep up and frankly, our library's graphic novel section isn't that big.  I may have to look into subscribing to comic books - is there such a thing?  Any suggestions?