Our first holiday tradition

This month we started a tradition that we thought of last year. Instead of (or perhaps in addition to) a traditional Advent calendar, we decided that each year we would wrap our collection of holiday board books and picture books and put them in a basket near the tree. Each night Owen gets to choose one to unwrap, and then we read or reread the unwrapped books each night as often as he likes. He got the idea by the second night. All we had to say was, "It's time to choose a book from the basket," and he got this gleeful look in his eye and hightailed it down to his little couch. He has picked all board books so far, and cute ones! He mostly likes the unwrapping part, and takes all his garbage pieces to the trash can as soon as he rips them off. The only trouble is, he is more interested in the unwrapping than in the reading, but with a little encouragement (and putting the basket away in a closet right away), he sits and enjoys the book with us too. We are excited for him to pick any book right now, but in the future we plan to number them so he needs to find the right number each night. Right now we only have 21 books in our collection, so we didn't start on Dec. 1 this year. Each year we plan to add one new book until we are up to 24. Of course Derek's childhood Night Before Christmas will be the Christmas Eve selection!