My daughter, who will turn 3 next week, was just sitting at the table eating breakfast. All of the sudden I heard her excitedly shrieking “These are my Christmas things!” Turns out, I left out a list titled “Christmas” with 3 items on it laying on the table and she put 2 + 2 together figured out it was hers. lol
So what’s on your kiddos Holiday shopping lists this year? My Kids birthdays are in November & December so this time of year tends to get a little crazy. I did a massive toy sort/reorganization last week to get ready for the influx of STUFF that gets introduced. Also, what are your unique family traditions for the holidays? I want to start some more now while they’re young that we can enjoy until they’re grown.
Oh, and my kids are SUPER into nursery rhymes these days. Itsy Bitsy Spider, Humpty Dumpty, Baa Baa Black Sheep, etc. I would love to get some kind of playset with figures for each. I’ve seen some random finger puppet sets, but nothing I fell in love with. Has anyone seen anything like this while shopping online or in a store? Worst case scenario, I might have to get crafty with some old school clothespin figures and make my own set. lol
Oh dear - I have left out stocking fillers for my brother (still young enough to believe in Santa - he’s closer in age to my son!) and have had to re-assign them as Christmas/birthday presents so as not to ruin the fantasy!
I’ve bought a lot of Chinese DVDs for my son - it is his absolute favourite ‘game’ … or was until I showed him a couple of annoying Japanese songs, which he’s now hooked on lol
I try to stick to things I will use for teaching (books, books, books, some dvds, educational toys, books…) since the rest of my rather large family will ensure he gets lots of the noisy and annoying STUFF. Plus they think he has too many books and doesn’t need to be learning so many languages, so they wouldn’t get the useful things anyway!
I am in the process of de-cluttering pre-holidays - I like to have the place mostly-respectable for the constant stream of guests, as well as getting rid of the unnecessary clutter in preparation for the deluge of more 
Try looking on etsy.com for beautiful fairytale sets - handmade and often very eco-friendly/organic toys made by talented people - way better than filling the pockets of the big corporations!
My kids are getting an iPad to share. (technically, I’m upgraded to an ipad2 and we are getting a new kid friendly case for the “kid one”)
Aromatic gluten-free play doh
Melissa and Doug magnetic numbers and I’m going to stick foam dots on them for easy adding/subtracting. (a la jones geniuses or the like)
The almost 2 year old is getting a preschool prep sight word coloring book.
The almost 5 year old is getting a $10 microscope from target.
A neat Lego box from etsy and some Legos–I’m recreating Montessori bead material with Legos. Pretty excited about that. But may not give that portion as a gift. The box filled with Legos (we already have some they don’t know about) will be a gift though.
Some more stocking stuffers I haven’t decided on. 
We got our DS a kids’ chenille rocker. DH and I each have a rocker in our drawing room and we thought it would be cute for DS to have his own. His is personalized with his own name on it. He loves it! It comes with an ottoman too.
We have two traditions that we love…
-
We have a mailbox ornament that opens and closes. Each year we put a “letter” inside about things that happened that year. Then the next year when we get out our ornaments we open the mailbox and read the previous year’s letter.
-
On New Year’s Day we go to a friend’s house and have all the traditional foods: black-eyed peas, greens, etc. Then we talk about what our resolutions are for the up-coming year.