giving and getting

As a parent, it can be tricky negotiating the holiday season. Part of me wants to spoil my kids rotten and give them everything they want, including the $75 Screamin' Serpent Roller Coaster (which, thank goodness, we found at a yard sale for $15.) Part of me wants to just go all Little House on the Prairie on them, and offer up an orange and a pair of mittens and maybe some molasses candy. I'll expect nothing but joy and thanks, of course.

I probably end up do more spoiling (sorry Pa) but I try to temper it some. One thing we do is divide the eight nights of Chanukah into different categories.
There's pajama night, for instance, where each kid gets pjs, which they need anyway. There's music night, where they get something music related. There's giving night, where we do something for other people outside of our family. There's Make-It night, where you have to make something for each other. And then there's Sock Night.

When I was growing up, we didn't have the money to be spoiled rotten. On Chanukah, friends thought I was lucky because I got eight presents. What they didn't know was that in my family and almost every other Jewish family that I knew, seven of those presents ended up being pairs of socks. (Well, mittens, too, but the socks really stand out.) As we grew older, it became a family joke. We still exchange socks, the flashier the better. But the first year my son opened up a pair of socks from his grandmother, he wasn't that psyched. Then I got smart and instituted Sock Night where that's all they get. My so knows exactly to expect. No looking at the package and imagining a rocket ship, only to find a pair of socks. This year I let him pick which night was which. He chose Sock Night as night no. 2. I don't know if he did that because he wanted Sock Night or because he just wanted to get it over with. Either way, he doesn't complain about anymore.

Last year at our preschool we started a sock drive for the homeless (working slogan: This year, EVERYBODY gets socks for Chanukah.) The preschool came through again this year, and on Monday we dropped 200 pairs of socks off at the Arlington-Alexandria Homeless Coalition. My daughter came with me to do the drop off. Here's hoping something sinks in.

I'm enclosing a picture of the puppet I made for Make-It Night.
My friend Annie does some craft blogging (though she's recently switched to book blogging with her kids.) Still, she inspired me to throw some crafting stuff here, too, as that's what I'd be doing with my spare time IF I HAD ANY SPARE TIME. Which I don't. Aside from the time I spend writing this stuff. Ahem. Anyway, did I mention that our family has a slight Muppet infatuation??? I think Jim Henson did some of his best work with pingpong balls.