Activities and New Traditions for the Christmas Season for Almost 2 Year Old

My son is one and my daughter is 3. We have had a tree every year and have had no problems. The first day we had to say no a couple of times but for the most part they are good. We did buy plastic ornaments to be safe though. We let my daughter help us by handing us the ornaments to put on the tree. We also take a drive to look at Christmas lights and she loves it.

Put up a tree that he can touch and enjoy the new experience and wonder that comes with it. That's my two cents.

S.

I buy each of my kids a book and I write in the front my thoughts on the year. This way they will always have it to take with them.

My two boys are now 8 & 10. When they were babies I started giving them pajamas on Christmas Eve. They get to open them that night and then wear them to bed. Surprisingly, it is one of their favorite traditions now. They have already been talking about their Christmas pajamas this year.

We also count down to Christmas and read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' before they go to bed on Christmas Eve.

A tradition that I am happy to have adopted from my childhood is that Santa doesn't wrap presents. The kids like it and so does mom!

I did a tree every year and we made it just fine. I think when they were 2 I just didn't put ornaments near the bottom.

Enjoy these years!!!! It's fun, fun, fun!

C. My family consists of an 8, 4 and 2 year old and we have always had a tree. We put all of the glass ornaments at the top and the kids put the non breakables at the bottom and those are the ones that they are allowed to rearrange. Every year we buy a new ornament for the kids (in their stocking). I work for nonprofits (Salvation Army) so we volunteer our time sorting at the Angel tree event and then they help pass out the toys at the event. We usually only volunteer for an hour (they are still little). Then we deliver cookies and homeade cards to the childrens cancer unit at Devos's children's hospital. (My cousins son has leukemia so this is important to us. We make homeade ornaments for the tree-popcorn balls, crafts. Look online there are tons of fun things to do! Reindeer food is always something that my kids love to!

One of our favorite traditions is to drive around town drinking hot chocolate and looking at the Christmas lights on Christmas Eve!! You can put hot chocolate in sippy cups. Then we come home and open one gift each!!!

About the tree....what we did with my daughter is only put soft/unbreakable ornaments within her reach, and we let her help by putting those ornaments on herself. We tell her that the soft ones are HER ornaments, and the other ones are MOMMY'S ornaments. She can still reach several of the other ones, but she seems to understand the difference between hers & mine.

My son was 2 last Christmas and the tree was a nightmare! He broke so many of my ornaments. I'm hoping this year will be better. :)
My sisters, nieces, and nephews get together every year a week before Christmas and all decorate cookies together. We also have a cookie trading party. That's really nice because you take 4 dozen cookies and come back with dozens more of all varieties. IT's awesome! They make very nice gifts if you add them to tins.

I am also making a cake that says "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" and we will sing happy birthday too! I'll let my little one blow out the candle. Every Christmas Eve, I read them the Night Before Christmas and we leave Santa some milk and cookies. We wake up on Christmas morning and open gifts, and have a pancake breakfast with all of our family members. IT's so nice!! :)
OH yeah.....On Christmas night, we have a big dinner with all of our extended family and all the kids participate in a talent show for the adults. They love that!!

when my first daughter was 1 1/2 we had a tree. our family listens to x mas music and decorate the tree even the kids help.
christmas morning we don't rush around to see family we relax and make a big breakfast, we invite family to come usually my dad comes and we sit around watching christmas movies on tv.

Hi. I was going through the same thought process a few days ago. I have a 19 month old daughter who has inherited my love of Christmas. She loves the Christmas section in all of the stores. I have been taking her for the past week. We walk throughthe aisles and learned the words of all the things: ie, Christmas tree, lights, wreath, Santa, etc. I only bought a 13 foot tree. This way she can see it, but she can't reach it becuase it's one a table. I cAn also stray piling gifts underneath it. Everynight she reminds us to plug in the lights. She loves it. We have also been playing a christ as kids
Cd for her so she can learn the carols. But her absolute favorite is Alvin and the Chipmunks, Christmas Dont be Late. I hope this helps.

I get my boys a new ornament every year. They think it's silly right now but I'm sure they will appreciate it when they finally get their own place and their own tree. They will have a good start with memories of things they enjoyed as they grew up. All of my ornaments are bears so I got their "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments as bears so they would remember mine then went into the Pooh ornaments, cars, disney, popular movie charachters, M&M ornaments, etc. They get to put all of their non-breakable ornaments on the tree themselves. We also make a birthday cake for Christmas dinner dessert and decorate it with "Happy Birthday Jesus" on it. They love helping to make it and frost it.

We enjoy putting up a train around the Christmas tree. Have him help out. It makes a great memory.

MC

I have a 21 mos old girl and we just decorated a gingerbread house. She had so much fun and was a mess! We made sure to take a lot of pictures. Other than that I'm interested in starting some of our own traditions from your responses. Its so much fun!

My son was about the same age as yours last Christmas. My trees are full of breakables, but I put the ones that really meant something out of his reach. We continually said "Pretty tree....NO TOUCH", and that worked. I knew it really go through to him when we were driving around looking at peoples Christmas lights and decorations and I hear him chime in from the backseat "Pretty tree...no touch!". :) We didn't have a problem. Not that he didn't try to investigate, but we were pretty diligent in letting him know that he couldn't touch it.

My son enjoyed seeing The Polar Express last year. This year we are going to go to Huckleberry Railroad to ride their Christmas train and see the lights...I think this is a great tradition to start for our family. (My son loves trains.) Growing up, we would get together with family friends on Christmas Eve and the parents hired a Santa to come for all the kids (parents supplied a gift for Santa's sack, and we all got to sit on his lap and tell him if we were good, and what we wanted for Christmas). Mrs. Claus was with him and it was a very nice tradition. My parents actually are doing the same for our kids now (but not on Christmas Eve, as there are new traditions for that night).

You may want to do a small tree in your son's room for his ornaments. I still tell my son it's for decoration and he shouldn't touch, nor is he allowed to plug it in (that's a given!)...but it's something he can help decorate and enjoy his special ornaments.

When my triplets were little I had a super yard (because I had triplets) and I put that around the tree and it worked really well.

A tradition that we did when I was little and I have brought onto my family was my grandmother would send us Christmas Pajamas every year and we would get to open that gift on Christmas Eve and wear them that night. I always like opening a gift the night before and having new jammas to sleep in.

My family has a Dutch background (my husband's father immigrated from the Netherlands), so we always celebrate St. Nicholas Eve/Day on December 5th. At Christmas we celebrate Jesus's birth - and not the coming of Santa Claus (as wrong as it may sound, our girls don't believe in Santa Claus at 3 & 5 - never have). They still get gifts, but it is explained that Jesus provided the means to get the gifts, and this is how he would like us to celebrate his birth. We also don't spend a lot on their gifts.

Tree - we didn't put a tree up the year our oldest daughter turned one, but we did the year she turned two. We even had her help us put the ornaments on. Then we just explained that she couldn't play with them, or the tree wouldn't look pretty any more. Our biggest problem was our 6 month old daughter at that time, she had started crawling and was into trying to get the low ornaments off. So, we had to move them higher. They haven't had a problem since that first year though.

Good luck!!

I put child-safe ornaments on my tree and let the kids move them around where they wanted to. When they were really little, all the ornaments stayed at the bottom of the tree! We still have NO glass ornaments on our tree--there are some resin ornaments and a lot of ornaments made from cloth, some jingle bells (metal), some stuffed animals, some plastic snowflakes. It's beautiful.

I would put up the tree and just keep breakables on the upper limbs. Also make sure it doesn't tip over. We secure ours to the wall with a hook and fish line. We also make a gingerbread house every year, but last year. It was just too hectic and the kids all mentioned that, so we'll be making one again this year. Another thing I did to save money and keep the kids busy when they were little, was to buy a roll of white or brown paper and have them finger paint on the floor with it and then wrap gifts in it. That way you'll be able to spot his gifts to others under the tree for family get togethers and he can go get them and give that special gift to Grandma!

We put up a tree every year...and yes, spend lots of time saying 'be gentle'...but it's that sort of tradition that builds warm memories for your children. We go with my mom and dad every year and take a hayride to get a tree, cut it and take a hayride back to the barn where we get hot choc (I put 'warm' choc in their sippy cups ahead of time). In fact we just did it today in a blizzard!!

Whatever you do, do it with joy and your kids will always remember it fondly!

~L.

Hi C.,

We just starting our family traditions as well. Our daughter is 15 months old. We went and cut down our tree together, put up the decorations. I plan on choosing some 'christmas cookie' recipes that my daughter and I will make together. On Christmas morning we will have Christmas muffins. I'm trying to come up with some other things that we can do during this season that we can do anywhere. My husbands family lives in Europe so we are only every other year here at home.

As far as the tree, we put one up. I just only put the soft non-breakable ornaments at the bottom within my daughters reach and I plan at nap times and the end of the day picking up the ones she took off and putting them back on. Minor inconvenience for not having to say 'no-touch' all day long. Plus, those were ornaments SHE was able to put on herself.... or at least try. I have a bunch of felt ornaments which are perfect for just this thing. All of the special breakable ones are up high. Sure the tree looks a bit ... unbalanced...but I don't care.

Merry Christmas! Enjoy this time with your son!

Sounds strange - I know - but many people that I know have put their crib in their playpen (depending on the size of the tree). Then they take it out on Christmas by which time their kid has lost most of all the interest in it. Functions kinda of like the playyard mentioned above. You could also just hang unbreakable ornaments where he could reach and the pretty ones on top (that's what we did when my nephews were little and we watched them often).

Other traditions for a 2 year old - If you're Christian, fisher price has a preschool aged little people nativity set (which Family Christian stores in sterling heights was carrying) and yo ucould play with that.

If you are Christians, another tradition I highly recommend is baking a birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas eve. Even your 2 year old can help with that

Kids I nanny (and one is 2) made paper chain to count down to Christmas. The 2 yr old did coloring a few of the chain links and had fun adding sticker decorations.

Those are my ideas...if I think of anything else I'll post them.

Have a Merry Christmas!

We get our daughter an ornament every year, my parents did it for me too. Then when I moved away I had a tree full of ornaments (or at least a really good start). My husband was thrilled because that is not something many people have a good start on when they start as a couple.

My sister made an Advent calendar for my boys. It was quite elaborate, but I've seen simple readymade ones at Hallmark. The one she made was secular, not religious, and it had ornaments, star, Santa, etc. cut out of felt and tucked into numbered pockets below a green felt tree. Each day, the boys would take turns removing one of the items from the pocket and pin it on the tree. It was a countdown to Christmas and gave them something to look forward to while answering that age old question "Is it Christmas yet?"

HI C.
We just get a short tree and put it on a end table. I'd wrap a few boxes to use as a barricade. Let the little ones put the non breakable decorations where they can reach. Mine would walk around with one, then put it back. But yes I think we all say no no don't touch the tree a few times a day.
Good luck, A. H

There is nothing like going to the Holiday Night of Lights in Dearborn at Greenfield village. Starts this weekend. Absolutely beautiful. Look it up. My husband and I cant wait to take our two year old there this weekend. We went before we had her and it was just the thing to do for Christmas. With santa, real reindeer, free horse drawn carriage rides, free rides in the model T cars, a skaing rink, merry go round, a restaurant, a wine and beer stand, carolers strolling around all through the village. Hot cocoa stands, and you also get to go in all the victorian homes at the village as well. You will love it!!