A Very Mater Christmas

Every Christmas and birthday, Zane and I spend a long time pondering the best toys to get Dallin. Really we are looking for the miracle toy. Dallin is a very social kid. Even as a baby, he liked to be in the middle of the action. He has a difficult time playing by himself. If I'm not playing with him, then he is following me around the house trying to help me or getting mad if I'm doing something that he can't help me with (when I'm making dinner, Dallin has a very hard time.) We keep thinking we could buy a toy that he loves so much that he would play independently with it. We have not succeeded yet until this Christmas.

Eli is Dallin's friend and our neighbor. He has cool toys. Dallin tells me about Eli's cool toys constantly. If the garage is left open, then Dallin will sneak over to Eli's house to play with the cool toys. It wasn't hard this year to figure out what Dallin wanted for Christmas...anything Eli has. Eli has a lot of Mater's. You can buy a Mater for most of Mater's Tall Tales (which is now Dallin's favorite movie.) So, this Christmas, most of Dallin's presents had to do with Mater. One toy Eli has is the Banshee from the Disney Cars Ghostlight movie. It was difficult to find this toy, but luckily Santa worked his magic and it was under the tree Christmas morning.

Zane and I were really excited for Christmas morning. The two toys that show up in Dallin's made up bed time stories the most are El Materdor and the Banshee. Grandma gave Dallin El Materdor on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning he had his own Banshee!

He didn't have the reaction we were looking for. I think he was confused with presents just showing up under the tree. Within a few hours though, Dallin informed me that he had cool toys like Eli. These toys sleep with Dallin and hang out in our car a lot when we are doing errands.

My dream has come true. Dallin will wake up each morning and instead of asking to watch TV, is excited because his cool toys are still out and he can play with them. Zane and I have also caught Dallin actually playing independently at times. It is beautiful to see and I discovered how much I love Mater and the Banshee.

A couple of nights ago we were playing as a family. When Dallin told us our characters, we assumed we were going to pretend to be these characters as we play wrestled (Dallin's favorite game.) Apparently that wasn't the plan. Instead we were going to play with the El Materdor toy which is a one person toy. You push a button and El Materdor rides around a track to jump over the bulldozer and land on a ramp that if you land right, the roses fall over. I got to be the bulldozer (which if we were going to wrestle, would be a fun character) and Zane was the roses (which is a totally lame character wrestling or just playing with the toy. Zane though figured out a way to make the roses cool. I wish I caught that on camera.).

Christmas was a success and so much fun. Just wait until I blog what I got for Christmas....

I know I'm way late, but Happy Mater Christmas everyone!