Taking the air out of Christmas

Dipity has shown great enthusiasm for most things Christmas. Christmas trees are a clear favorite, especially if combined with a festive beah. Dipity just learned to say beah, and subsequently has fallen in love. If there was a Christmas tree in the Three Beahs book, I don't think we'd ever be able to pry it away from her. Christmas lights are very cool too, whether they are on a tree or not. The same goes for Christmas bulbs, which to Dipity are just very colorful balls. This is why all of the colorful balls on our tree can be found between five and seven feet off of the ground. And snow, well that is beyond cool. Santa is even cool, from a distance or in a book. We haven't tested him up close yet, but I can't imagine it will go well. Clean shaven kids make her nervous.

I know that inflatables don't go over well, a fact which makes me a very proud father. Maybe I'm just old fashioned. Maybe I'm an elitist. Whatever the reason, I find inflatable snow globes and Tiggers' emerging from chimneys to be the absolute apogee of bad taste. Dipity agrees. Today when we were killing some time in Sears, we happened upon a half dozen of these monstrosities. I thought she'd enjoy them. I had just had to pry her away from a forty foot tree and a ten foot beah. I caught sight of the inflatable snowman, snow globe, and Santa's workshop before she did. I asked her if she wanted to see a big snowman. She said yes with great enthusiasm, so I pointed her in the right direction. When she came within eye sight of the bigger than life Christmas icons she paused, and then looked back at me and said "uhhhhppp." I lifted her uhhhhppp, and she buried her head in my shoulder. She didn't look up until we were safely into tool world.

Now, some may say that she was just scared. I saw an eerie similarity between her refusal to look upon nylon Rudolph, and her rejection of every vegetable other than corn. I'm not a big fan of her rejection of peas and carrots, but this almost makes up for it. The only thing better (or worse) than big air filled nylon snowmen and chimneys would be big air filled nylon vegetables. Who knows, there may be inflatable Veggie Tales characters. That would scare me.