It is a very busy year for our family.  My son and his wife have just given birth to the most amazing baby boy that I have ever seen since the birth of my own son.  My son himself, is trying to juggle his new family and his work on his dissertation.  I think he is finding it a lot harder than he expected it to be.

In a few short months, my daughter-in-law will also be working on her thesis.  I am looking very much forward to this as grandma gets to take care of baby Jake while his mommy and daddy are very busy doing their research.

I certainly feel sorry for them and don’t envy them at all for all the essay writing that they are going to have to do in the next few years.  They are both very brilliant people and I know that they will do well, and I am just so very glad that they live near me and don’t have to put Jake in day care.

It is that time of year when my son makes up his Christmas list.  I find what he asks for amusing sometimes and other times it is quite shocking.  For example, last year he wanted a toy turtle and a shell.  This year, it is a little different.  Whether it is because he has watched too much television, or he is picking it up from school, this year is much different.

Just the other day he came up to me and said:

"Can I get a Wii for Christmas dad?"

Well, I cannot say that I was expecting him to ask for video game systems at such a young age - but if that is what he wants, I will see what I can do.  Thing is if I bought the system, I would need to buy Wii games too, right?

Well, instead of buying everything myself, I decided to pass a list of games to his uncle and grandparents and they could each buy him one.  I made sure to mention that he loves Super Mario, so he should get a couple of games that he likes.

I was going to ask for an Xbox 360 and some games for Christmas, but after reading some Xbox360 game reviews, I decided against it.  My son would want to play with me, and the games are just not appropriate for his age.

Even though my son will be getting a Wii for Christmas, it will be in fact a family gift.  Just because we are parents, it doesn’t mean that we won’t want to play too.

It seems as you get older, your family gets bigger.  The problem with that is at this time of the year the larger your family, the bigger your Christmas expenses.  When shopping for young kids, the costs are usually rather inexpensive, but as they get older, things change.

Now this year is the first year where I have really run into this problem.  Being an Uncle has been very fun up to this point and I particularly loved buying toys for my nieces and nephews.  But, they are older now, and their demands are greater than they used to be.

I should have clued in a couple of months ago while I was helping my nephew David setup an iPod to computer transfer.  You see, their parents bought them iPods for their birthdays this year, so needless to say what was on their Christmas list: iPod Video accessories.

They wanted the speakers, a case, an armband, a kit to hook it up to the television and many other accessories.  Why couldn’t the iPod come with all of this right out of the box?

I decided that even though I was their favorite uncle, I wasn’t interested in spoiling them.  I bought three iPod FM transmitters, one for each of them, and that better be good enough.  After the list this year, I am dreading what they will want next - watch it will be a notebook.

I was recently told that the internet was not a place where children belonged.  Being the mother of a bright five year-old little girl, I decided to do a little bit of research on this topic on my own.  I came across a site that I knew Alana would absolutely love.  The site, thedollpalace.com, had so many wonderful activities for a girl her age.  Looking at the pros and cons of raising a child in this technological age, I decided to use my daughter on this particular site to test the theory.  She absolutely loved the cartoon dolls and as I watched her use the dress up games to create cartoon images of just about every person she knew, I sat back and thought about what this was teaching her.  It was certainly bringing out in her a creativity that I didn’t even know she had.  Alana has never had much of an attention span for sitting and doing anything for lons, but as I watched her sit and fill in coloring pages, I was proud that she was showing such an artisitc talent.  In the end, what I came up with, was that the internet was a great resource for my daughter in building creativity, confidence, and eduationally passing some time on a rainy day.  The Dolls Palace has become a favorite in our household.