Mommy Dollars

  This is a Mommy Dollar.  It is part of a genius plan that my husband created several years ago when our four children were younger, and the idea of taking all of them shopping for my Christmas presents blew his mind.  The Mommy Mall scenario was born of his desire to let the children participate in choosing my gifts without dealing with the hassle of wrangling four children in a retail setting during the holidays. This man is brilliant.

Each December, the children earn Mommy Dollars for good behavior, for random acts of kindness and mostly for helping the Mommy out a little bit with chores around the house (stuff they normally do for free, really, but the competition to do them for Mommy Dollars is FIERCE!  Ever seen four kids throw down over emptying the dishwasher?  Crazy!)

My husband shops for my gifts (thank you, Amazon Wish Lists!), and when the time comes, he sets up everything in the basement.  He tags the gifts appropriately & hollers (yes, hollers) for the kids to run downstairs to preview the mall.  They get an idea of what they want to "buy" for me, then they count the Mommy Dollars in their stash to see if they can afford what they want to buy.  Sometimes deals are made to combine funds and be co-buyers.  That's cool, as the kids work together to buy things for me when ordinarily they might not share even a Pop Tart crumb with their siblings.  Most often the counting of the dollars is followed by the mad dash upstairs to find me & ask, breathlessly, "WhatcanIdoforyouIneed25moreMommyDollars!" That's when things REALLY get cookin'.  Stuff gets cleaned.  Stuff gets put away.  Stuff looks GOOD after the mad Mommy Dollar Dash.  I can even get people to vacuum under my couch, y'all.  I ain't lyin'.

A couple of days before Christmas the shopping begins.  I have seen video of the Mommy Mall frenzy.  It's cray cray.  Picture the Filene's Basement sale combined with the madness on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and you might have an idea of what Mommy Mall is like.  Then the wrapping is done (most of the time each child puts his or her purchases into one big box for the sake of time, so I get chocolate covered cherries in the same box as socks and hey, is that a Tervis cup?  Four very eclectic, random, ADD packed boxes, but I love them.)

And that is Mommy Mall.  A friend suggested I post the idea on Pinterest, so I created this blog post.  My husband will be happy to know that his genius has been bestowed upon the world via social media.

Merry Christmas!