Pages Turning

We are on the last page of the 2008 calendar. Daniel turned the page as soon as he got out of bed this morning. This has been his job since last spring when he started watching the days. He tells me about past events now by telling me the number that was on the calendar when something happened. We went out to eat at the China Inn on 2 and we had a day off from school on 26.

I read somewhere over the weekend about the idea of wrapping up 24 books and having your child open one book each evening from December 1st until Christmas Eve. I have more than that many Christmas themed story books on hand, so I thought Daniel would really enjoy it as we have been doing the traditional story time before bed each night. I used three different colors of wrapping paper and wrote a short message on a post it note tag on each. It took about 20 minutes to get them all wrapped and into the basket. The little boys didn't see the basket until this morning and were excited to open their package (book). They were both wanting to open it as soon as I came in the door this afternoon. I made them wait until dinner was finished. I will make them wait until bedtime tomorrow night, but I had to go out to a PTO meeting this evening so we did it earlier. Raymond read the tag (Open on Dec. 1 ~ There are 24 days until Christmas) and Daniel opened the first package. I have the rest of the packages in a flat basket on top of the game cabinet in the dining room. Inside tonight's package was Eric Carle's Dream Snow. Raymond was kind of put out that it was just a book, and one that we had packed away last year at that, but Daniel did not lose any enthusiasm. Raymond was right with us as we settled in to read together. Although he reads a lot on his own, he still enjoys me reading to or with him. The boys are not sure what is in the rest of the packages. Raymond asked me if there was another book, but I told him that he would have to wait until tomorrow. He gets to open the next package tomorrow night.