onetiredmama: Christmas Ghosts

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I'm trying to walk calmly through Toys 'R Us, but this is exciting news. If I open a credit card today, I get 20% off everything! More Hot Wheels sets for Jack!

And that means the Biggest Littlest Pet Shop normally $39.99, on sale for a season low of $32.99 this week would be just $26 and change. Yay for me! I am such a savvy shopper wait until I tell the Deal Diva! Now where is that Littlest Biggest Smallest Largest Pet thing? And what is that little voice in my head? "Don't buy it! Don't buy it!" Well, that's annoying. "You said you wouldn't buy this big plastic thing that you know Riley won't play with." Who is that? It's the ghost of Christmas Presents Past.

Oh. Her. That's right. Last Christmas when I continued shopping long after my list was complete, I vowed not to overdo the holidays this year. "It's not about the presents," The Ghost Of Christmas Presents Past said. And after moving last year's Littlest Smallest Biggest Pet Contraption out of the way 4 times each week, I vowed not to buy another big plastic shell of a toy that wouldn't be interesting past New Year's Day. Riley really only wants the little animals that come with it anyway, so she can bring them to the store, and school and the doctor's office. So she can plunk them in the bathtub and bury them in the sandbox and cover them with playdough. I'll just get her the little animals I told myself early in the shopping season. I am not going beserk with toys this year!!!

Dear Santa, fewer presents, more memories.

But in waltzed the Ghost of Christmas Presents Present and this fab discount. She reminds me of Jack's Christmas list: the entire Toys 'R Us catalog transcribed onto three sheets of paper. The Target catalog, with several items circled on each page. I can hear Riley saying, "Yes! Yes! I want that!" in response to any girlie item that appears on TV, as if wanting it is justification enough for getting it. The Ghost of Christmas Presents Present hands me the Toys 'R Us credit card application. She likes this deal too. Like my friend said in justifying her holiday over expenditure, "They're only little once!"

I think that's what does us in: that idea of a fleeting childhood, where we get just one chance to make magical memories -- to grant their every Christmas wish. That's a powerful feeling. This is my one shot to give Jack his best 6 year old Christmas ever. It's my one chance to give Riley a wonderful 3 year old Christmas memory filled with little pets and condos in which they can live. In a panic I stop a store clerk. "The Littlest Biggest Grandest Pets. Where are they? Where!" I take my hands of the frightened clerk's lapels and smooth my skirt as he points a shaking hand toward the back of the store. "Thank you," I chirp at him, when all of the sudden the Ghost Of Christmas Presents Future ambles up next to me. "What do you want?" I ask her sulkily. I can imagine where this is going.

I just want to show you something," she tells me. The store fogs up and I can see the biggest Smallest Tiniest Plastic Pet Thing taking up 1/8th of our family room. Jack is smashing his trucks into it. Riley is washing the 3 pets that came with it in the sink. More fog, and I see my lovely children grown up, sitting around a Christmas Tree.

"Remember when we made that gingerbread house Jack?"

"The one where mom put the walls on for the roof, and the roof for the walls?"