Daddy's Desk - Dec, 2006 "Elf"

There’s nothing like a series of holidays to remind you how much fun a 2 year old can add to your life. My wife and I have a two older sons, 9 and 10 years old, and we had forgotten all the joys of the toddler years. The holidays were starting to get a little stale for us. The kids’ Christmas wish lists were starting to look too much like my own wish list…iPods, Playstation 3, plasma TVs, hockey tickets, Mini Coopers, and so on. But my 2-year old, Christopher, has breathed new life into the holidays.
It started with Halloween, my personal favorite “Dad” holiday. In fact, I think Father’s Day should be combined with Halloween to consolidate the holidays a little bit. For me, Halloween has always meant Mom stays at home and dishes out candy while Dad puts on a mask and walks around the neighborhood with the kids knocking on stranger’s doors. It is the best quality time between a Dad and his children, and the kids have a blast. Then came Thanksgiving, which for us meant a 15-hour drive to Buffalo, New York. Over countless rivers and through endless woods, to Grandmother’s house we went. By the time I sat down to dig into my cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes some 900 miles from my home, on the top of the list of things I was thankful for was the DVD player in our vehicle, which performed the unenviable task of entertaining our precious 2 year old for 95% of the trip. In fact, I was so thankful I’m seriously considering naming my next son Chrysler. On a side note, I’m not sure if every 2 year old is like this, but Christopher has a limitless capacity for watching the same movie over and over, again and again. For this trip, it was Will Ferrell’s holiday classic “Elf” which features the longest belch in all of cinematography…and I must have heard that belch at least 178 times over the course of 2 days. It got so bad Christopher changed the name of “Elf” to “Burp” as he pleaded for further viewings of the movie, “Want Burp! Want Burp!” But, I digress.
Now it is Christmas time, and this year we’ve already noticed that Christopher is starting to recognize some of the many symbols and signs of the season…Santa Claus, Christmas trees with “bootiful” lights, ridiculous traffic around the Mall, piles of boxes in the garage, and Mom and Dad endlessly decorating the house and stringing up lights. But the best thing about this Christmas season is our little toddler is being introduced to a “new” Jesus. He points out and recognizes Jesus every time he sees Him on a Cross, but he’ll often follow up by saying “ouch”. While it may be years before he comes to understand why Jesus is on the Cross, today he can easily relate to the infant Jesus lying in a crib in a manger. Baby Jesus and Christopher share many common bonds…diapers, crying, teething and I’m guessing if Jesus had access to DVD technology in Nazareth, an unending desire to watch goofy gas humor over and over.