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I’ve noticed that the holiday decorating is creeping earlier and earlier as I get older. The transit hub I pass through has been decorated with garland and ornaments since the beginning of November. Now that this is the last post before Thanksgiving, I am posting a holiday/winter-themed pajama set in keeping with the previously “agreed upon” threshold of waiting until Thanksgiving to start the slide into the holiday season. Target has a bunch of holiday matching family PJ sets, but this one is my favorite. It is wintery without being overtly holiday, but let’s be real, it is my pick because of the adult onesie option. Get these PJs for your family and Instagram the heck out of them, because did your family actually wear matching pajamas if it wasn’t posted about on social media? (Am I too much of a Grinch? LOL.) Holiday pajamas are available in prices ranging from $7.99 (for the dog) to $26.99 for the male adult onesie. Plaid Holiday Family Pajamas Collection
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Cb says
Aww, those are super cute! I’m not normally into the holiday season but I’m feeling a bit more enthusiastic this year. We’ve got Little Blue Truck’s Christmas ready for the 1st of December. I’ve got santa sorted and tickets to the see the lantern festival at the zoo. I just need a few stocking stuffers and I’m done shopping. My dad has just had surgery so they can’t travel which I think I’ll find quite hard but I’m trying to be grateful for my little family of 3.
CMMomma says
That sounds like a lovely holiday season shaping up. I’m sorry to hear your dad won’t be able to travel. I’m hoping to join you on the Christmas shopping done early list as of Friday! I am planning on tickets to the holiday home tour in our city, an event I always look forward to and it will be the first time my three year old can come. I think he’s going to have a blast.
Cb says
Oh that sounds really fun. Nursery is open between Christmas and New Year while our offices are closed so we’re going to take my son in for a few half days so we can get some projects done around the house.
SC says
Sounds great! I’m also feeling very festive and want to relax and enjoy Christmas this year! We moved about 3 weeks ago, so I’m excited to put up our decorations and tree in our new house. We also missed the typical fall activities in our area because of the packing and moving and unpacking (and summer here is unbearable, so it feels like we haven’t done anything since spring). We have tickets for breakfast with Santa and the zoo’s holiday lantern thing (new this year), and we’ll go see some of the free or almost-free light shows. DH and I even have a date planned in December to go see hotel lobby decorations (and get cocktails), then go to a nice dinner!
I’m finished shopping for Kiddo and our 7 young nieces and nephews. I still have to buy for DH (but we may do a joint gift), my parents, my in-laws, and a teenage niece.
AIMS says
Can we talk about play kitchens? I’m tired of my kid pretending that the couch is an oven and hiding play food in the cushions; would like to pick something up in the sales this weekend. Anyone have recommendations? Things to consider? Anything you love/hate about yours?
octagon says
We have a kidcraft one that was a hand-me-down from a friend and it’s fantastic. Lots of compartments (fridge, cabinet) to open and close. Room to hold a lot of different toys (generous friend also gave lots of play food).
The only thing I hate about it is how big it is relative to our house, but it gets played with almost every day so we’ll deal with it until it’s time to pass it on.
Cb says
We received a big wooden play kitchen as a hand-me-down and it’s really lovely but definitely a space hog. I got the metal pots and pans from IKEA which are a hit and save metal tea and biscuit tins to kit it out.
Anonymous says
I love the Ikea one. A million options on etsy for decals to personalize it as well.
Anon in NYC says
This is what we did. We personalized the Ikea kitchen. We also bought the Ikea pots and pans and accoutrements. We also bought a Billy bookcase and added a door (from Ikea) to make a fridge.
AwayEmily says
We have the small Hape one (grandparent gift last Christmas) — I chose that one because it wasn’t super big, and was wood rather than plastic. If we were near an Ikea I probably would have gotten one of those. It gets played with A LOT and is definitely worth the space and cost.
Re: fake food/pots/pans: ask on your local listserv. I bet someone has some they would like to get rid of. We got a giant lot of plastic fake food that I think has been through three different families. There are some bizarre things in there (cans of sardines??) but the kids don’t care.
rakma says
So we got a plastic one (a coffee maker was a requested component of the kitchen, so our options were limited) and the ease of moving it has been a surprising plus. It’s easy for an adult to pick it up and move it (and the 4yo can slide it around if she’s in the mood). It’s in a nook off the kitchen right now, which I never would have agreed to if it were a big wooden thing that would be there forever. They ‘cook’ while adults are making dinner, which is wonderful for everyone.
We found that clean-up wise, storing the pans and food in the kitchen didn’t work great, so there’s a bin next to the kitchen where that all goes.
Spirograph says
We have the Kidcraft Uptown one. Got it 2 Christmases ago, and it has held up really well. I like that it’s a little taller than some other models, so my big kindergartener is still happily playing with it. I would say it’s used almost daily by at least one of my kids.
Santa brought the kitchen (which took a solid couple hours to assemble on Christmas Eve), and various relatives supplied a bunch of plastic food, some shopping baskets/bags to store it in, metal pots and pans, cooking utensils, a dish soap bottle and sponge, aprons, place mats, and plastic table settings. I like that all of it will fit inside the kitchen if needed — there’s plenty of fridge and cupboard space. The paper towel holder is a non-starter for us — papertowels end up unrolled everywhere and the dowel is too sword-adjacent, but otherwise I have no complaints. The kitchen is in our kids’ bedroom and we confiscate any food we find outside of it. After a few weeks of this, they learned to keep it contained.
Em says
We have the Kidcraft one and got the one in the dark wood color so it matches our kitchen. It is huge, but doesn’t look like a kid’s toy so I mind it a lot less. Our son plays with it everyday, so definitely worth it. The play food still ends up everywhere.though….
AIMS says
Is it really that big? We’re in an apartment so I was resisting for a while but we have so many kitchen accessories at this point (food, pans, dishes, etc.) that I think it may be more orderly to have a designated space for it all. The Kidcraft one (“vintage”) says its 33 inches long which would fit in a nook near my kitchen. Am I underestimating it’s footprint?
AnoninBigLaw says
We have the kidkraft vintage one and I think you’re spot on for the footprint. It’s maybe a foot or so deep, so it doesn’t take up a lot of space depth-wise. It did take several hours to assemble. If you’re not picky on color, there’s usually one color at least on steep discount around black Friday from Amazon. We also have bins to keep the dishes and toy food in near the kitchen. Echoing other commenters to say it is well-loved and used nearly every day, so totally worth the space and $ in my opinion.
AIMS says
Thanks! Glad to know my eyeballing of the space was reasonable. And I have been warned that they are all a huge pain to put together. My friend’s husband more or less assembles things for a living and he almost lost it putting together the Melissa & Doug one last year.
AnoninBigLaw says
We got ours for our 3 year old last year and we just pulled out all the pieces and told her we had a fun project to do. She kept asking, “what are we building?” and we told her to look at the parts and guess. It was fun to see how long it took for her to realize it was a kitchen, and it was a fun project to do with her! All that to say, you totally don’t have to do the big reveal of a magically-put-together-kitchen on Christmas morning if you don’t want to ;)
Em says
We have the Ultimate Corner Play Kitchen, which is pretty big, but we are in a house and have a large kitchen and an open floor plan so I didn’t really care, particularly since it is the only large toy we have in our main living area. They definitely have smaller ones.
IHeartBacon says
I second the ikea one. It’s got plenty of storage and the stove burners light up. It’s also simple looking so it doesn’t look garish if you keep it in a common area of your house. The only negative is if you want to be able to move it from room to room. Since it’s wood, it’s not very light.
Aly says
We got a hand me down play stove. That seems to have sufficed for our play kitchen needs so far and has a very small footprint! Bonus – all the play food and such gets stuffed in the oven every night for tidy up.
AIMS says
Thanks all! Will let grandma pick between IKEA and KidCraft Vintage. Glad to hear it’s worthwhile!
Betty says
Vent ahead! One of the most popular summer camps in my area sent an email last night stating that they are going to open registration for summer camp 2019 on December 12. That is a solid two months before other camps in our area, and in the middle of the holiday season. If it weren’t my kid’s favorite camp, I would simply ignore the email and deal with it in February. However, this is a camp that tends to sell out. It is a “farm camp” that focuses on being outside, sustainable agriculture, etc. The irony? We live on a small farm. Ugh. One more thing to do during December! Did I mention that my kids have also had two snow days in less than one week, and have gone to school only four days in two weeks?! I’m hiding at work for a few hours today…
anon says
That really is obnoxious. I’m not ready to start thinking about summer camps.
avocado says
If it makes you feel any better, I signed my kid up for one camp in September.
Anonymous says
Really good article in the times today about baby sleep: basically, everything is normal and do what works for you- backed by science!
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/well/family/baby-wont-sleep-through-the-night-youre-not-alone.html?action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage
AwayEmily says
I really like this piece — especially the advice to “focus on the family system.” I know families where both the parents and the kids thrived on co-sleeping — it legitimately made everyone’s lives better. I also know families where early sleep training was critical for everyone’s happiness. We hear a lot of “every baby is different!” and that is true but also every PARENT is different, and their well-being matters too.