Dear Santa, Love Nora

You guys! Is anybody still even reading? I think I’m trying to set a record low for number of blog posts in one month. Busy just doesn’t even begin to cover it. I can’t even believe that Christmas is two days away!

For a couple of years now, I’ve been sharing “Christmas wish lists” of Nora’s. I figured I’d do the same this year, in case anyone is looking for ideas (um, completely last minute!) for their own three-year-old kids in their lives. Since Nora is completely into Christmas and has more of an “opinion” on toys now (which is basically that she loves them all!), we’ve had a really hard time narrowing down the gifts this year. Between Santa, us, and the grandparents, aunts, and uncles… we might be doing a little spoiling. We can’t help ourselves. I’m just sayin’.

I’ll also do a list for Vivienne, too (much harder!), but not until tomorrow.

By the way, I’m linking to all of these items on Amazon, but if you’re interested in any of them, you should definitely price shop. In many cases, the prices currently listed on Amazon are A LOT higher than what we actually paid for the item.

Here we go:

Nora has a “mini” kitchen that my brother and sister-in-law got for her for Christmas when she was 16 months old. At the time, it was the perfect size for her, and I never really thought about getting her a bigger one… until now. She is really getting good at pretend play, so I think she would love this! The price fluctuates a lot on this. We ordered it from Walmart for only $129 the week before Thanksgiving, but right now it’s listed at $229 on Amazon. Crazy! I think a kitchen set is one of those classic pretend play toys that nearly every kid should have. We’re actually planning to put both Nora’s AND Vivienne’s names on this since we believe that both of them will get many years of play out of it.

We apparently got one of the last ones available, because I’m told Fisher-Price is discontinuing this particular model. They’re still available from some retailers (I linked to Amazon above), but the price is very high. You can get the Fisher-Price Loving Family Dream Dollhouse for much, much cheaper than that! I saw it at Toys ‘R’ Us for around $50 today. I’m glad we ended up getting our hands on one of these, though, simply because I like this style better. Would it have mattered for Nora? Nope. :) This dollhouse (and the other version) has a ton of available accessories out there, so we put a bunch of them on Nora’s wish list that we shared with family. I think she’s going to end up with a well-furnished house.

Nora and I were “shopping” on Amazon together one morning a few weeks ago, and she randomly told me she wanted a purple guitar. She’s really into performing for us recently, so this should be funny. And probably annoying sometimes, but whatever. :)

Nora has been memorizing her books for months now, and “reads” them to us instead of the other way around. We figure she might want to give the Tag Reader a try so that she really CAN “read” on her own! :)

We haven’t seen this yet, but I scored it for $10 on an Amazon Lightning Deal on Black Friday. I don’t ever mind having Disney movies in the collection—plus we heard this one is pretty cute.

Nora is big-time into school right now. She can’t WAIT to go to school. She’ll go to preschool three mornings a week next fall, but until then, we put this little backpack on her list. I read in the reviews for the LeapFrog Tag Reader that this thing is actually the perfect size to cart around the Reader and the associated books, so that’s its primary purpose—although I’m sure she’ll find a multitude of uses for it.

Nora is so excited for Christmas this year. I seriously cannot wait to see how she handles opening all of her presents!