Hurray, it's toy-catalog and toy-commercial season again!!  Aren't you so glad?  ;)  Is your mailbox threatening to tip over from the added weight of the bulk mail alone?  The catalogs from companies you haven't heard from since last Christmas?  Have your children suddenly become little zombies who point and sputter "I want that!!!" after every TV commercial?  Parker has circled just about every single toy in the Wish Books (everything that isn't, as he says, "too girly" anyways!).  He's trying to make it a little easier on us, I suppose... No guesswork for us this year on what he REALLY REALLLLLY wants under the tree.  Why, thank you, thank you son. So this funny kid of mine, who has a severe case of The Gimmees right now, doesn't get the whole concept of "Santa is not made of money, darlin'.  He (ahem, Mama and Daddy) can't get you everything you ask for."  In Parker's reasoning, Santa doesn't need money to buy toys, he can just MAKE a Wii at his workshop.  His elves can just BUILD a Batman Playset or the Lego Star Wars Death Star.  That's pretty tough logic to argue with, now isn't it?  Especially since he saw the elves, with his very own eyes, make real Etch-A-Sketches in the movie Elf.  ;)

So, imagine the TV on, blaring commercial after commercial for noisy and obnoxious toys and we must "collect them all!" of course.  He has already learned his lesson and will not ask Mama or Daddy for yet another toy on this particular day.  So instead, after seeing a commercial for this or this or this, he whispers in a tiny voice: "Thanta, will you pleathe get me that for Chrithmath?!  Thank you!!"  (Do you know how much I utterly ADORE his sweet little lisp???  *sigh*)  It's as if he's whispering a prayer to dear old St. Nick up in the North Pole.  Santa's always watching, you know!!  ;)  

I even caught him on the potty yesterday, with the Target Toy Catalog lying across his lap.... and he was just browsing away and whispering to Santa Claus as he flipped through the pages.  I just smiled and closed the bathroom door.  Love his heart.