Our Ornament Tradition

One of the things I enjoy most about being a parent is being able to begin new traditions with my little family. Last year, not only was Harper born into our family, but so were a few new Christmas traditions. One of the traditions we began last year was the tradition of Kevin and I choosing a Christmas ornament for Harper each year. The purpose of this is so that when she gets older, she'll have a collection of ornaments all chosen with love and meaning for her own Christmas tree. I'd like to say I came up with this one myself but in reality, I read a blog post Jessica wrote over at The Newly about how her family does this and I thought it was such a great idea so we kind of adopted it as well. 

Last year, with it being Harper's first Christmas Kevin and I chose the following ornament from ETSY to reflect the occasion. I'm not one for traditional ornaments so I thought this served the purpose without being too cliche'. 

This year, Kevin and I knew pretty early in the year that Harper's Christmas ornament would be a monkey. We chose the idea of a monkey ornament for several reasons. The first reason being that the first real thing Harper seemed to show interest in this year were monkeys. She loved her monkey security blanket as well as her Curious George. Both of which you never find too far from her even now. The second reason being that throughout this year, Harper's little personality has really came out and to sum it up, she's become quite the little monkey. Our child has so much energy and she loves to laugh and play, climb all over the place, and have I ever mentioned her obsession with bananas? Yes, clearly her ornament for the year had to be a monkey. It summed up her personality and interests to a T. So over the weekend while at Target, I caught sight of this cute and colorful monkey and decided this was just the one I wanted to hang on Harper's tree. It looked just like her :P 

I also couldn't pass up on the elephant one as well. Only because that happens to be her mama's favorite animal :P (We'll just chalk that one up as a gift :P)

While at Target browsing the ornaments, Harper seemed very interested in them so I decided I'd let her pick out her own this year. As you all know, Target has hundreds of ornaments to choose from so I was curious as to what all Harper would pick up. The first thing she grabbed out of one of the boxes was a doll. Considering my daughter doesn't own a baby doll (I know I can't believe it either!) I was surprised. But next thing I knew she was tossing it back in the bin and grabbing up a turtle. Which again, I was surprised considering we don't have any books with turtles or any toys. I guess she was curious. She tossed it back in the bin though a short moment later and then took off to the other side of the display. And then she saw a reindeer that sort of looked like a dog. That's all she wanted. She kept saying "roo roo, roo roo". I tried telling her over and over again that it wasn't in fact a roo roo, but was in fact a deer. She had none of it. She kept saying roo roo matter of factly and took off to browse the rest of the store. I thought that was the ornament she was going to end up with but then my sister spotted an actual dog ornament. Once Harper saw it, she quickly handed up the other and took off running with the dog. After that, I knew she was sold. She happily hopped back in the buggy with her little dog ornament and kept hugging it to her little chest over and over. I'd say I have an animal lover on my hands ladies. 

What other traditions do you and your family do around the holidays?