All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.. or maybe a Nintendo, or a dog or a doll??

So here we are, just three more short days until my favourite day of the year...Christmas Day!!!  Now I’m thinking that as normal I should be really excited about the impending festivities. But instead, as I type this, I am without doubt in a state of confusion and dysfunctional chaos while trying to determine what to do next and also how to never let this sorry situation happen again. So, as my act of attrition, I write this as a cautionary tale for parents everywhere, for those relaxed folk who think, like I did, hey it’ll be ok ! or it’s a bit early for that ! we can do that whenever.. .. this is my tale ...  a tale of .... ‘The Christmas List’

Ok, in order to give this a little context and because this is my first proper blog, I’m a dad of two lovely little girls, daughter 1 is almost 10yrs old and daughter 2 is nearly 8yrs.  Both are gorgeous and both are very different in character...

Now, given that daughter 1 is nearing her final year of junior school, it’s fair to say that her belief in the ‘bloke in red’ is at best tested at this time of year...  she has friends with older siblings and those that are just that bit more sceptical and those that just plain know. Now I know for a fact, that she knows that he doesn’t exist and that she knows that I know that she knows, but bless her she won’t actually say it out loud!! ... It’s almost that thing that an admission of knowing may actually ruin it for her and that somehow she wouldn’t get any presents. So, instead whenever the subject of sending a letter to Santa comes up, or a very dodgy looking Santa arrives on our doorstep then she just casts her head towards me and gives me a knowing wink.

Oh and talking of strange Santa's on your doorstep, what is it with the Round Table Santa’s?  I realise it’s for a good cause but surely sending a young farmer in a dog eared outfit, fake wig and with a cushion protruding carelessly from his waistband is enough to cause concern for all small children and parents alike. This coupled with a sleigh formed from a farm trailer being pulled by a 4x4 while dressed in tinsel and with a crackly PA version of silent night, it just doesn’t exactly hit the mark. Even the offer of a crumpled mini bounty from a plastic bag is really no recompense from the trauma they cause and the likelihood that they’ll actually destroy the myth rather than confirm it.

So back to the story, well daughter 2 is still very much in the firm believer category, she’s sweet and very innocent and believes what you tell her, unless it’s that it’s ‘time for bed’ or that she has to ‘behave herself ’ in which case she looks at you with disbelief. So for her, Christmas is a time of lists; excitement, reindeers and of course wishes. In fact when it comes to writing her Christmas List then for her that’s the be all and end all of her Christmas, in fact it’s the rock around which her day is built.

With all that said, you’d probably expect that me and the ‘6^th finger’ would take this letter writing activity a little more seriously. However, as the years have passed and as daughter 1 has lost interest in documenting her wishes ...we too have taken our eye of the ball with this task. So this year, when the subject of a Christmas list first came up, daughter 2 was dismissed with a casual ‘it’s too early for all that’ and ‘we’ll do it next week’... and so as the weeks have gone by, the list (in many forms) has been created and left casually on the side in the kitchen awaiting it’s departure to the North Pole.

Now I’m pretty relaxed, most of the time, so knowing what was on the list I’ve set about my ‘elf duties’ of procuring most of what she asked for (although I have put my foot down when it comes to a dog).  Daughter 2 keeps asking when she can post her letter and I keep telling her ...'we'll do it tomorrow'. Hey what's the rush, it's all’s in hand ...isn’t it?  

Right, so this is where the plan starts to go wrong...

For the past couple of weeks, in my role as 'Father Fingers’  I’ve been busy in my  task of granting the wishes,  I’ve spent many an hour trawling the t’interweb, visiting stores and generally striking things off my copy of her list, all exactly to daughter 2’s specification!  My visits to electrical supermarkets have been so frequent that my friends have commented on whether I have an ‘iron’ addiction (story for another day). I’ve also taken to wearing a purple shirt just so I can pop into the canteen there for a coffee, during the endless hours of research and shopping.

Now, all this shopping and endeavour  has been nothing more that my ‘cunning plan ‘to ensure successful delivery of said presents, well it would be if it was not for a little spanner in the works that I discovered only today, an error on my part, so monumental that it could ruin everything. In fact so organised have I been that all presents have been wrapped and placed in their hidey holes until the big day. 

Now I don't know about you, but finding places to hide presents can be a challange, when the girls were little this wasn't an issue, I used to leave presents in carrier bags in the spare room with just a towel over them and like Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility they'd be protected. Miraculously, it seemed the more obvious the hiding place, the less likely my two interpid explorers were to find them. As they've got older however, things have become more tricky and this year is no exception especially with losing the garage to my new office. So this year presents are stored in the cupboard above the stairs on a shelf or three at the back and again with towels, old curtains and odds and sods in front to try to fool prying eyes. The only saving grace of this storage place is that this, like the cupboard in the utility room , it's the cupboard that everything falls out of  whenever you open the door, no matter how carefully you do it (come on admit it, we all have one of those don't we??) ...so while it may not be the carefully concealed, the prospect of iminent maiming or serious injury from falling boxes is enough to keep kiddy fingers at bay. 

So yep, you’ve probably by now already guessed my dilema. My list, the one I've been working from was the original, the un-submitted, un-baselined version. One that wasn’t frozen and what’s more, one that had been left next to a pencil and very much within the reach of tiny hands... So on deciding that I’d better actually send it to the ‘big man’ I opened it one last time to gaze with a smug smile on all the items that I’d collected. To my horror, the sight that greeted me was a letter that barely resembled the original, pencil etchings and rubber marks adorned this piece of paper and where once my list had been, there was a new, refined and updated list.  

So that’s where I am now...  where once stood a ‘blue DSi XL’ now sits a ‘Yellow DSi XL’ .. and for scooter read La La Loopsy... in fact it’s safe to say that’s there’s as much common ground between the two as between Santa and Guy Fawkes!  Why did no-one decide that there should be a cut off date for lists, we have days for everything else (in fact I’m surprised that the card shops haven’t created one?)  so why not for this... a time where requests are documented and only subject to change with the express agreement by Santa himself.  We could make it November 31^st .. all lists produced and submitted... let the shopping begin and we could all calmly go about our festive duties!! But no not me, now for me I need to come up with a plan to address this act of kidotage!!

So what will I do? Well I’m not sure for this year.... I’ve already tried the ... ‘well he is magic ,I’m sure Santa saw the list when you wrote, so you can’t change it’ ...however that was greeted with ‘well if he’s that magic then surely he saw me change it too’ ... can’t really argue with that I guess!!

So for me it’ll be the usual last minute race around the shops for something off the new list to take her mind off it, oh and maybe see if I can find that elusive glove with 6 fingers for the missus, the one that I’ve been searching for so long. It’s funny, but not matter how well I plan I always end up doing a last minute dash around the shops, bumping into other frantic parents who too have left it too late.  The sweaty masses all clambering for the last Nintendo DS, the last ‘Moshie Monsters doll’ and a nice bit of shortbread for Nan..

So while I can’t save this year completely, I can make sure that I’m not in this place next year and neither are you...!! So as the dust settles on 2011 and the presents have been discarded and disappointments forgotten, I will be sat, paper in hand on January 1^st starting the Christmas list for 2012!


Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year !! X