I think a fabulous way to touch on how fast their interests and personalities change is to buy or make one ornament a year that represents the personality of that year. I might extend this to a "firsts" ornament for later on.
So far, I have five ornaments to work on with Cole alone. And I'm floating with ideas!
1 month old (2007) – birth info + picture
1 year (2008) – Why are you upside down?
2 years (2009) – T-Rex or Snoopy
3 years (2010) – Baby Bird
4 years (2011) - Armadillo, Volcano, or Mummies
At one month old, there's not much of an interest, or personality to work with. I want to do an ornament that announces his birth specs. I'm thinking including a picture would be amazing.
I love this ornament for inspiration. Found on etsy.
I love this picture of my small baby, although there are so many it's hard to pin down any one.
For one year, there's plenty of personality and love. I think a commonly enjoyed thing by Cole and in our family was Brandon flipping him upside down and saying, "Why are you upside down?" We have many, many pictures of this!
This is one picture of the cuteness at his sister's wedding back in May of 2008. My inspiration for this picture is having a sketch done of it and resizing it to a smaller size with the catch-phrase "Why are you upside down?" I'd love to put it into a miniature frame for safe-keeping and turn it into an ornament with a string.
These are two etsy artists I'm considering: here and here.
Cole's first "big" word occurred the day before his second birthday. It was dinosaur. No lisp. Clear as day. Dinosaur. He impressed his aunts and grandparents with proudly shouting dinosaur at his birthday party. That was the root of the obsession that still carries on over two years later!
I stumbled upon this ornament on etsy and it inspired me to create an ornament with one of the many plastic dinosaurs Cole has already.
I recalled a plastic animal ornament project that young house love completed this year and will likely use their tutorial for making my own dinosaur ornament. You can see that here.
Finally, I'll paint it green because that was and still is his favorite color.
Around the time that Cole was working towards three years old, he was obsessed with baby birds. I think it's interesting because his first real word was 'bird.' Even to this day, he role-plays as a baby bird.
There was a heart crushing moment where he happened to catch the speed-camera clip of a baby bird's body decomposing on "Creation" and flipped because the bugs were eating the dead baby bird. He is not Cole, he is baby bird.
I love this bird on etsy, although I could make a baby bird in a nest with a mushroom bird -- but this chickadee is so adorable and for $10, who couldn't want it?
So we arrive at year five -- age 4. This one is hard! His newest and longest kick this year has been baby armadillo. He role-plays as baby armadillo more often than baby bird now. It's his first preschool year, he loves baby animals and life sciences. He is obsessed with volcanos, mummies (yes -- the real, not halloween mummies), and information in general.
We're leaning towards an armadillo because it's so representative of who he is. We took photos with Trizza just today and the way we got smiles guaranteed was to have Cole should "baby armadillo!"
If I do an armadillo, I love this ornament on amazon for its' realism -- or I could do another plastic inspired young house love ornament like my t-rex up there.
Whatever the end case -- I'm looking oh-so-forward to hitting Michael's tomorrow to find my plastic little guys (Armadillo? T-Rex?) and depending on Brandon's feedback -- possibly a nest and mushroom bird.
I really love this idea and cannot wait to see what a variety I'll have on Cole's Christmas tree by the time he's an adult.
