Working furiously

All I can say is that wow! All of the chipboard prototypes are sitting right here, and I cannot resist giving a itty bitty peek... When you design something on paper, it is hard to tell how it will come out. In fact, my house is littered with one-of-a-kind prototypes which just didn't make the cut. Each time we do a new item, we have to invest tons of money on it, so we need it to be just so. And we have very exacting standards. So even though it is like telling me my baby is ugly, Caroline often says, "Um... no!" I have a dozen new chipboard items (and much much more!). I cannot wait to see what everyone does with these cool new products! Recently, I have been on a Maya Road hunt in magazines. I saw us in Cards Magazine as one of the companies they love, and I was SOOO happy. We were also in Scrapbooks, Etc as a Christmas Gift idea... how cool is that? And last week, I pulled out a Scrapbooking & Beyond and saw us in the Crazy for Chipboard. It is hard to think that when we started 3.5 years ago our products would be so well received. David and I started talking about our Christmas traditions the other day. And we decided to not do Santa Claus with our children. I guess I always knew there was not a Santa since my parents never really hid it well. In fact, they were terrible with most American holiday icons. When I was about 4, I stood on the stairs watching them put something in our stockings that I saw them buy a few days before. It was like this with Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and so on. I do not know if they ever really *got* how these icons worked, so they did what they thought made sense. Thinking back, it is quite funny. They sort of said, "Um, this is from Santa (or Easter Bunny, etc)" and I would see it was something they bought. In fact, I did not know other kids actually believed in Santa until I saw it on sitcoms on TV. Even though I was born in the US, I did not get some American traditions. For example, when I was 16, I saw the movie "Father of the Bride" at a friend's slumber party. And I was wondering why Steve Martin was so stressed out. In Chinese tradition, the man's family pays for the wedding and related festivities, so I guess I thought everyone did it this way. Turns out when we got married, I personally paid for about 70% of the wedding, so we followed neither tradition. :) Here is a quick photo of Jonathan in his new eating chair. I took a ton of them in his bright "coat of many colors". We are trying to train him to sit with us at the table for meals in preparation of starting solids in a few weeks. He is happy in the chair for about 20 mins, and then gets frustrated watching us eat. It is funny because he makes these cute chewing motions as we eat. So cute!