You know that my child is obsessed with penguins, right?? I mean, OBSESSED. “Happy Feet” is her favorite movie. She drags her sad, threadbare “Kenga” around, no matter that it has remnants of avocado on it. There is a candy store near Damen and Belmont that has a huge, human-sized penguin in front of it, to which she screams at every time we drive by, which is a lot.

Did I tell you about our new rule for Christmas? Apparently, Vann mentioned this to me last year but I just don’t remember…but a mom I know told me that they give their kids 3 gifts a piece, just like baby Jesus was given by the Magi. I heard this and thought it was SO cool, and actually selfishly, really good for me, as we all know I struggle with limits when it comes to gift-giving.

So, from here on out, Charlie (and Baby B) will receive 3 gifts from us, not including her “Santa”, of course. We always had Santa and stockings when I was growing up (who am I kidding, we still do, and I’m 31!) so that is a very important tradition to me. I introduced stockings to Vann the first Christmas we were married, and I think he would admit he feels great pressure trying to come up with creative ideas (especially under a $100 budget)…but I LOVE it! It’s so much fun picking out little things and seeing his face when he opens it on Christmas.

At any rate, yes, we’d like to buy a kitchen for Charlie but that will have to wait…we’ll pool money and put it aside and buy it when we have a house to put it in. We still need a “Santa”, however, especially since this is the first year she’ll wake up in her own bed. I ran across this plush penguin on Amazon.com. It came yesterday, and I think it might be too difficult to wrap, so…can you just see her face when she sees this??