I mentioned in the Halloween post that Edward (and to a lesser degree) Daniel fashioned their own Halloween costumes from various amalgamations of their dress-up inventory. In some cases they had to fashion accessories or other authenticity-related items from scraps of paper or ribbon. I loved this creativity and vision. I loved that they did not involve me except to ask for more tape (I finally just gave them their own roll--you would have thought it was pure gold.)

Last week we got to meet up with some friends from out of town just before they left to head back home. They brought a gift for the boys--a science kit with a series of experiments starting with acids/bases and working up to creating a volcano. After an initial disappointment that we couldn't just get right to exploding a volcano, the boys and John set about systematically working through the experiments. They (all) were captivated.

I love this. I really do. I love the curiosity, the delight, the questioning, the quest to find the answer, the imagination. It is truly wonderful to observe, and I know it will serve them well going forward.

However, it may not serve ME very well come Christmas. You see, with all this imagination and inventiveness, Edward has come up with a very specific and complex request for Santa this year. He will not be deterred by our assurance that no such item exists in this world, because "Well, Santa's elves can just make it in the workshop."

Oy.

The item is a toy snowman, large enough for a child to climb into and hide/play in. This snowman will have a hinged door in the back through which the child may crawl as well as a hinged top hat which the child may doff from inside the snowman, standing on a stool. This is slightly scaled back based on my informing him (out of self defense!) that Santa does not do electronic toys (though he could totally bust me on this since last year's haul included walkie talkies.) The original imagined prototype had interior buttons that the child could push to automate the hat-doffing and/or arm waving, and/or snowman talking.

So now, I throw myself on the mercy of the blog and BEG for ideas of how to pull this off. Keep in mind that this is a boy who cut out a paper star and taped it to his shirt to become a sheriff and who willingly, excitedly accepted a dry-cleaner hanger bent into an arc with a string tied from end to end as a bow with "arrows" being the removable cardboard bottom of said hanger. That is to say, it does not have to be a masterful work of art. But it must be big, it must be white and it must have a hinged top hat. And it must be in our living room on Christmas morning.

Last year's Santa test was a breeze compared to this.