Scrabble Anyone?

Let me start with I have become an Etsy fanatic. I think is was about a year ago when someone posted a comment to one of my blog posts about looking on Etsy for a smocked dress for Anna, well I am hooked.

I have bought a number of different things as gifts. I will say every thing I have bought has been beautiful and quite different from what you would find in a store. For some reason I feel like Christmas is sneaking up on me and I already feel unprepared. My hope is for a stress free Christmas. I think part of making it stress free for me is being prepared. I dislike rushing, I dislike rushing to find the right gift for someone even more.

I have decided that I am going to try to knock out a few gifts every week. I will also say that my budget this year for gift giving will be less then last year and considerable less then previous years but more on that later.

Have I said that I really like Anna's teacher and the teacher's assistant. I think at first they thought I was a bit odd because I was and still am very cautious with Anna and her transition into preschool. I think they just did not get all the attachment stuff but at first just did a lot of nodding "yes" to me.

What do I think has changed their perception? Well for starters for the first week when I would pick up Anna she would come running to me some times I would get a quick hug but it was usually followed by her slapping me square across the face. I think the first time the teacher saw it she was just shocked. I could feel my face get red but when I saw the teacher's face get red for me I think that is when she realized what I was talking about.

I asked if Anna hit any of the children in the classroom? The teacher told me "No!" I think she never realized that me leaving Anna was as hard on her as it was. I asked Anna to hold her hands, that is what we do. I asked her to repeat after me, "Hands are for loving, not hitting." At home we alternate this with praying to Jesus to help us to be kind.

The second week went much better then the first week. Anna no longer hits me and instead I found out that she was telling the classroom "Mamma" and smiling. I feel that the full day is just too long for her to be away from me so I pick her up after lunch. She is a smart cookie and now realizes that I am coming for her.

Wow this turned into a much longer post then I thought it would. So back to Etsy and my buying spree.

I wanted to get a few of the little gifts out of the way. While searching on Etsy the other night I stumbled across these charms that are made from old scrabble tiles. On the back side it is the scrabble letter then on the other side it is a picture or saying. The price was just what I was looking to spend on a teacher's gift. I got three charms with silver bead necklaces for less then 15 dollars in individual gift boxes. By the way that price included shipping. There are so many different ones to choose from that I had the hardest time picking just 3 tiles.

There are 2 assistants so for them I purchased one that has a picture of the characters from "Where the wild things are" and another that has the word "Dream" on it. For the Teacher I was tossed between ones that had neat teacher/education sayings and ones with apples. I am sure that every teacher has at least 10 apple things too many so when I saw the one that was a branch with apple blossoms on it I thought this is it.

I can not wait for them to arrive.