Dear Santa,

You might be surprised that I’m writing to you seeing as how I’ve struggled with your identity and all. But Sophie needs a little help in the letter writing department and I felt that writing this letter to myself, I mean you, is the least I could do.

Tonight she sat down with pen and paper to compile her list of, and I quote, “six or fourteen things”, that she would like this year for Christmas. Since she does not yet know how to read or write, she decided to go with a code of her own. She wrote the first letter of each word of her heart’s desire. For example: bt is the modern edition of the Barbie Townhouse that I had back in 1977. In case you’re wondering, this was her choice and, therefore, my enthusiasm upon discovery of this modern version of my most prized childhood Christmas present (Next to my Grease album of 1978. Or was it 1979? Shouldn’t you remember?) had nothing at all to do with it.

So her numbered list looked something like this:

1 b t

2 b t

3 c

4 n

I realize that not everyone likes to decipher codes. Especially a Christmas list such as this one in which the first two items begin with the same letters. Well, not really. Actually, the first item is Buzz Lightyear Wings and the second item is the aforementioned Barbie Townhouse. In that order. But give the girl some credit because she’s only four and can sound out the first letter of just about every single word I throw her way in the carpool line at preschool. C and K words are a little tricky for her but she gets most of them right.

Let’s continue.

The third item is Barbie clothes which I realize should probably read B C or as her pattern goes, b c. But did I tell you she’s four? The fourth item I totally forgot and who could blame me after surviving all three of her attempts at writing this letter? Or list. Or code? I’d really hoped I could remember that last item because, you see, her father and I have been blamed for all three lists going awry.

The first one was going quite nicely. She even numbered the first item all by herself but then she asked her father for help. That didn’t turn out so well. Maybe he didn’t understand her code but the end result was lots of heavy sighing followed by her announcing to me that she was “so frushrated with her dad”, because, “he just draw a line on my paper”, she explained. So naturally I helped her start all over with a fresh list but that got ugly when she asked me to write the number three. In my defense, she didn’t say where.

Take three: Sophie’s Christmas List

I suggested that I go ahead and number this list in advance for her and she seemed thrilled with the suggestion. That’s when she expressed her desire for fourteen items. I thought five was plenty so of course she had to suggest at least six rather than agree with me. But she only listed four. I don’t remember what happened next. All I know is that she has four items and I still don’t know what number four is. I also know that this list is very important to her. Even though her verbal requests change daily. Or hourly depending on how much T.V. she watches. We all know that every toy product on the market will be advertised at least 692,000 times before Christmas.

In summary, I’d like to clarify that the items on her unfinished list include, but or not limited to, Buzz Lightyear Wings, the new modern edition of the 1977 Barbie Townhouse and Barbie clothes. I would also like to mention her verbal requests include, but or not limited to, an alarm clock, a real kids’ laptop, the Toy Story Mrs. Potato Head, a Barbie case for her Barbies and all those new Barbie clothes she’s asking for, twenty or fifty various toy products advertised over the past few weeks (Don’t even ask me to recall one of them because I stopped glancing at the T.V. and started agreeing with her a long time ago.) and I believe she even threw in her own kitchen counter. I’m drawing the line on that last one.

Kids today. Think they can have just anything they want.

Ohyea—and she’d really like her own cell phone if you can pull that off.