One of the greatest things about having children is the chance to relive the holidays through their eyes. Finally, you can experience the joy of toys; milk and cookies for Santa; overeating at the Christmas party and throwing up at your Grandma’s house… oh, wait, that wasn’t a good memory.

Last year our older son, Kyle, was one and a half and very observant about the world around him. We approached Christmas with glee, and eagerly anticipated his reaction to the giant mound of presents under the tree that morning. He toddled up to the pile, grabbed a present, and got really, really, REALLY excited!

…about the wrapping paper. In fact, he didn’t appreciate the presents at all. He wanted to play with all of the pretty bows and ribbons and paper. If he even looked at one of the gifts, he wanted to open the toy and play with it right then and there. He didn’t realize that the whole point was to tear through each gift and say, “What’s next?”

And even though that giant pile of gifts is what overwhelmed us last year, I have decided to turn it into an advantage. You see, I’m not the one who made the pile so big. It was my relatives, who live all over the country, who relished the idea of spoiling Kyle with presents from afar. We didn’t have Grandma’s house to visit after opening presents at home. All of the presents arrived here, and all went under the tree.

This year the same thing will happen again, and so I purposely am not buying presents for the kids myself. In fact, I am curtailing my gift purchasing overall, because I am at home caring for my children this year instead of working at a traditional (read paying job. I wondered how I would set a budget for this goal, and then it hit me. Literally. read more