Christmas Story

Good morning!

Hard to believe it is already Christmas Eve.  Regardless of where you are and how/what you celebrate, I wish peace and happiness for us all.

Our traditions with Samantha have become so much fun and gives us a lot to look forward to.  Every year we circle the neighborhood to see the lights, bake cookies for Santa, and track Santa on the Norad Santa Tracker.  Another tradition is to give Samantha a gift on xmas eve of a new pair of pj's and a movie to watch before heading to bed.  She loves her traditions and they are important to her.  

Today we are tracking Santa (he is currently visiting my friends in China), going to have dinner with Tyler, and then having my nephew and his wife over tonight.  It will be great to see Tyler and make sure he feels our love at Christmas time.  We put together a nice photo collage for him, along with some restaurant gift cards to enjoy his favorite dinners.  We also have some bubble wrap collected for him to enjoy popping!

I was thinking about what stands out as a Christmas memory with Tyler.  I would have to say its the BALL PIT!  We used to take Tyler to an indoor playground to play and his favorite thing was jumping into the ball pit.  He would laugh and scream and swim all over them.  He wanted other people to jump in with him and play.  So at Christmas time we bought him an inflatable ball pit and about 300 plastic balls.  We set it all up the night before to have it ready for him.  We wondered what his reaction would be....

The next morning I had the video camera ready and filmed him slowly coming down the stairs.  He turned the corner at the bottom and looked right where the ball pit was sitting. There was a pause.  You could see Tyler was trying to wrap his head around what he was seeing.  Then....with a scream....he ran straight for the pit and jump in!  The great news was how much he loved it.  The bad news was he would not be interested in anything else from that point on for quite a while!  He took to it like nothing else he was every given.

It didn't take long for the inflatable walls to become a deflated nightmare so we bought him a plastic kiddie pool and filled it up with even more balls.  We kept it in his bedroom and every morning for a very long time we woke up to the sound of a kid jumping into a sea of plastic balls.  There were even mornings that we went over to his room to find him sleeping in his ball pit.  Of course he eventually lost interest but I look back on that very fondly.

To all my readers who care for their special needs children, my wish for you this Christmas is to make a memory that will live fondly in your heart forever.  And to feel the warmth and joy of the season.

Be well and God bless.   Tom