Mery Christmis

Nights like this make it all worth while.

HB and I had decided last week that we would take two boxes from the Operation Christmas Child campaign that is running at our little parish here in our community. They had to be filled and returned by Friday November 11, so we didn't have much time.

Frodo and Mini-Me are with us every Wednesday night. We've been having some real challenges with Frodo of late. He is displaying behaviours that are very self-centered, and indicate that he has a huge focus on money and material items. That's hard for us because neither are at the center of the universe for HB or I, and so we can't always relate. We also get frustrated with the "gimme gimme" attitude of entitlement that gets displayed frequently by Frodo, and has been fairly regular behaviour for the last four or five years, meaning that it doesn't look like it's 'just a stage' ... which is what we had both been hoping.

So....we decided to see if we could involve both boys in filling these boxes with us. And just to further torture ourselves, decided that we would take them shopping Wednesday night but that we had to all make a deal with each other.

None of us would buy anything for ourselves that night - nor talk about what we would like to be able to buy. Nothing. Not a drink, game, piece of clothing. Nothing.

What an incredible experience.

They each agreed to fill a box for a boy their age. So Frodo was shopping for a 10 year old boy, and Mini-Me for an 8 year old boy. The deal was they would pick out some items, consult with us, with the final decision resting with HB and I. We made sure that they understood the money in the can on top of our fridge was covering the cost, so we did have a bit of a budget. HB and I have a large cookie jar into which all of our change goes year round. In Canada that's significant, since our $1 and $2 are in coin form!

It started out rocky. We hit the toy aisle at Walmart and Frodo started with the "oh! look at that! I'd love to have that!" ... which morphed into "I don't mean now...but for Christmas". I'll give him this - he's quick. He soon realized that he could get the message across by saying "I think my kid would like this!"

We just kept up the mantra. "Who are we shopping for? No, I don't think a child in a third world country really could use the Star Wars dvd box set, but good thinking Frodo!"

We spent two hours and about $100 in the mall.

We found cool little toys (balls, cars that run on magnetized plastic ramps, a recorder), coloured pencils, books, t-shirts, socks, hard candy ... all of which were appropriate and could fit in a shoe box easily.

And we bought nothing for ourselves or each other. To the point that we had no milk the next morning for breakfast because I really had meant to pick that up on the way home!

When we got home, the boys each packed their shoe box. We held hands and said a little prayer, and invited each boy to add his thoughts.

Frodo prayed that the boxes would get there safely.

Mini-Me prayed that the boys receiving the boxes would love their presents. Then he sat and decorated the top of the shoe box lid. He wrote:

"Mery Christmis. Love your presents. From Mini-Me, age 8"

and I fell in love all over again.