Holiday Hustle and the Hamper

In my list of Thanksgiving "I'm thankful for's" I should have also expressed my gratitude for online shopping and Amazon's free shipping on orders of $25 or more. They have made my holidays so much more pleasant, and I was able to ignore all the Christmas junk that was set up WAY too early this year. Now I think it's out a week before Halloween or something. Let's just skip Thanksgiving all together, shall we? I mean, there's hardly anything about that holiday retailers can sink their teeth into. Maybe eventually we'll have a strange permutation of Thanksgiving one of these years in the future that involves a jolly old turkey who scuttles around leaving presents for grateful little children. He's paying it forward for another year of avoiding the chopping block or something...

Anyway, Logan is cognizant enough to know what he wants for Christmas this year, and he's pretty excited about the holiday. When I asked him what he'd like Santa to bring him, he simply asked for "Cars and candy." How adorable is that? I could spend maybe $15 on his gifts this Christmas and he'd be overjoyed. Of course, I won't, but it's nice knowing that I don't have to. I'd better remember this year because it's probably the last one which will involve such simple requests.

While I was procuring some things for the holidays and this weekend's festivities (Auden is being baptized), I picked up a clothes hamper for Logan. It's pretty cute: a collapsible, canister-shaped hamper made of nylon, and it's cleverly fashioned to look like a lion. When the top is pulled closed, the lion's face shows, so it's like the opening of the hamper is the lion's mouth. I was hoping he might be interested in it enough to want to deposit his clothes into it on a regular basis. Boy was I wrong.

I put the hamper in Logan's closet and asked him to check out the lion living in his closet. He looked at me like I was crazy, but then I explained that I wasn't lyin' (yes, I had to say it), there was indeed a lion in his closet. He cautiously walked into his room, and he smiled and giggled to find the hamper waiting for him with a pile of dirty clothes beside it.
"This is your lion, and he needs to eat. You know what he likes best?"
"What?"
"Dirty clothes. So when you take off your dirty clothes, you should feed them to your lion."

I did not expect the frenzy of activity that ensued after that explanation. He quickly dumped all of his clothes into the hamper, and then started on the basket full of clean clothes I had folded and was about to put away.
"No, Logan. The lion only likes dirty clothes."
"But there ISN'T any more!"

I directed him to our bedroom, and he scampered off, bringing back a couple armloads of mommy and daddy's dirty clothes. Before long, the lion was full, so we took it into the laundry room to deposit its first meal. I had no idea I had bought a bulimic lion for a clothes hamper, but, hey--it worked out. I had a pretty good laugh about Logan's excitement over a simple clean-up session.