A Purple Present

When we asked Ben what he wanted Santa to bring him this year he said, very confidently, "A purple present." Hmm. So I inquired as to the desired contents of this purple present and found that they included crayons, pencils, and a hippopotamus. The first two were pretty easy, and somewhat surprising, since we currently have a house full of broken crayons (with all the paper peeled off, as peeling this paper seems to be Ben's primary interest in crayons at the moment), and pencils. For that matter, we actually have a plastic hippopoatmus, a PURPLE hippopotamus no less. But Ben's list of purple present contents did not change, regardless of how many times I asked him.

He did however, have some other ideas when he made his Christmas wish list at school.

Once again, we actually already had all of the items on this list, even the carpet. Anyhow, when Christmas morning rolled around, some purple presents were waiting for Ben under the tree.

Inside his purple presents Ben found crayons, pencils, and markers, as well as a toy hippopotamus that walks, and of course everyone's favorite classic, Hungry Hungry Hippo. Hungry Hungry Hippo was actually a big hit and we played lots of games over the next few snowy days.

Ben was a great present-opener this year. He said "Oh wow, look at this!" almost every time he opened something. But of course, the more presents he opened the less he cared what was in each present and the more he cared about opening the next one. At Harold's parents' house on Christmas Day he kept following Harold's Mom around saying "Is that present for me, Grammy? Is that one mines?" It was very cute, but it has the potential to become highly obnoxious as he gets older. We will definitely have to keep an eye on that! But right now he is still a sweet little boy who is thrilled to help anyone open any present, just for the sheer excitement of it.