captain_slinky | Molly got me the best present this year

Molly (my 6-year-old daughter, for those of you who are new to this) is, for all intent and purpose, is an "Average" six-year-old girl. Her Christmas List for Santa this year started out as a Toys R Us Christmas Wishbook with every item circled in red marker till we told her that she had to narrow it down to *FIVE ITEMS* (despite Santa's bag being built with Timelord Technology that allows it to be bigger on the inside, Santa still needs to conserve space for purely organizational reasons). And so it was that Molly's letter to Santa this year included the following items:

Tinkerbell & Periwinkle Fashion Doll Set - Our last trip to Disneyland was just a few weeks after the release of the "Tinkerbell: Secret of The Wings" DVD where we meet Tinkerbell's long lost sister, Periwinkle. Molly dressed in a Periwinkle costume for the filming of the Christmas Parade and when Periwinkle SAW it, she pulled Tinkerbell over to show it off. Periwinkle may now be Molly's favorite Disney character!
Dreamlights Unicorn - Constant commercial saturation since February on the Sprout TV network (which Molly watches CONSTANTLY whenever she goes to see Grandma) has been on The List fir the past 10 months. Every time we mentioned Santa, Molly would insist that she needed to let him know that she needed a Dreamlights Unicorn.
Angry Birds - This year Molly wanted ALL THE ANGRY BIRDS. She wasn't sure what Santa would bring that was Angry Birds-themed, she just knew that she needed Angry Birds. I think that Angry Birds may be to Molly's generation as Mario was to the generation before her and as Pac-Man was to the generation before that, one of those Shared Pop-Cultural Icons that everybody will have their own story about and allow for some great social bonding once she hits her 20's :)
A Science Kit With The Digging Where I Can Find Gems - It's a really cool science kit with some rocks trapped in a block of sandstone which teaches the basics of archaeology, I was impressed that it made it in to her Top 5 Santa Requests!
A Christmas Train - We have had a Christmas Train that goes around our tree FOREVER that my Mother-In-Law got for me before Crystal and i were even married. It was plastic and not really meant to be an "Heirloom" of any kind, but by golly it lasted for some TEN YEARS in this household. Two Christmasses ago, when Molly was 4, she kind of fell on it and it never fully recovered. Last year it barely worked, and this year we just didn't have a Train. There was plenty of talk about getting a new train, but we never actually got around to it. So when it showed up on the Christmas List, I was touched that she had such good memories associated with our train that she wanted Santa to bring her a new one :)

Christmas morning came, and Santa had left his pile of presents under the tree surrounded by a BRAND NEW CHRISTMAS TRAIN! Molly was very impressed and started playing with everything else under the tree, and she was very happy :)

As parents are required to do, Crystal and I started asking Molly about all the stuff Santa had left. "Oooh, what's that? Do you like that? Was that in your letter to Santa?" so on and so forth. When I asked Molly "So hey, how about that Train Santa brought you?", she answered in a way that took me off my game.

"Daddy, the train is for *YOU*. I asked Santa to bring us a new train because I know you loved our Christmas train so much!"

Now that right there? That's PURE. That's... that's what Christmas is all about. A little girl, given 5 Christmas Wishes, uses one of them to get a present for her Daddy. Nobody suggested this to her, this was pure Molly.

I think I'm allergic to this post... it's making my eyes all red and watery, and making me all sniffly...