All I want for Christmas...

Elephant, of course! You'll have the coolest Friday pet pictures on your blog for the rest of your life and longer...

"You're daddy is getting you the elephant."

"Really. No Way!!! You LIE."

"Why would I lie? I am an adult. I was in the Air Force."

Come Christmas Day ..

"Where's my elephant?"

The elephant. But only if she agrees to help walk it.

Oh, I'd go for the Barbie Corvette any day... they elephant is only a distraction to make you think how wonderful the Corvette is.

Plus, I owned a Corvette once... and I really think that everyone should get that out of their "system" before they are actually old enough to drive.

I'm wondering how she'll feel the first time she has to change the litter box.

I'm still waiting for that miniature pet elephant that shows up so much in sci fi. Maybe it's hiding out with the flying car.

Not a hippopotamus?

The only way you can save her from the shackles of American consumerist ideology and esteem-destroying, unattainable ideals of womanhood is to get her the elephant. You're a bad parent if you don't.

Dude ... you simply have to go for the elephant.

It would be so like soooo cool to see her face when she opens the package. Hard to find kosher elephant. Going to take a radically huge oven to bake it in. Plenty to go around and sandwiches for months.

Talk about an epic Channukah dinner. Slicing with forceful determined, manly strokes as your adoring trophy wife clings to your muscular leg. The children and minions looking on in awe and wonder. Deftly serving up great manly slabs of succulent meat with your large trusty blade. A mighty sword befitting the man of the house and leader of his tribe.

Think about how all the other kids will talk about having turkey or ham. Your girl can talk about eating Dumbo. How cool would that be.

http://frankfrazetta.org/viewimage.php?loc=frank_frazetta_afightingmano…

Makes quite a nice Channukah card I think.

Be the legend.

Your daughter is very smart. She's pulling the old "put something outrageous on the list so everything else will seem reasonable by comparison" trick.

I mean, really, a Ken doll??

For a couple of years I tried to save my daughter "from the shackles of American consumerist ideology and esteem-destroying, unattainable ideals of womanhood" (John McKay @ 8) by deflecting her request for a Barbie. ("We'll see what Santa decides.") That ended one year when she looked me straight in the eye and said, "It's really up to you, isn't it?"

Anyway, I yielded on the Barbie issue, but my daughter never did get a remote-controlled Corvette. She did get one operated the old-fashioned way, by pushing it around the floor. I never remember any of her Barbies riding in it, however. Turned out to be a great vehicle for some of her smaller stuffed animals. The Barbies are gone now, but whenever I pick up the Corvette and ask whether it can go in the Goodwill bag, my daughter gets misty-eyed and begs me to put it back on the shelf where it otherwise gathers dust. It is starting to look as if this pink plastic car has entered the ranks of 'heirloom' toys that will be passed on to the next generation.

Get her a Ken in a Barbie dress.

It'll teach her important lessons about diversity, and much more important, it'll make the baby Jesus cry.

I gotta vote for the Barbie and Ken. My daughter loves her Barbie and Ken Wedding Edition. But then again, I gave up trying to teach cultural/social issues through toy purchases when my daughter went through her princess phase at age 3 to 4. There's just no fighting that ultra gender identity developmental stage. I do draw the line at Bratz though.

Plus I have fond memories of playing with Barbies as a child. The best game was Barbie goes parachuting. Just tie her to an umbrella and throw her off a fence, tree, elephant, etc.

My oldest daughter turned 20 today. She is a university student studying science, and has saved up enough money to go to Thailand this holidays for three weeks. Her biggest thrill? To go and see elephants! (and drink cocktails out of coconuts, but just ignore that for now).

She had her Barbies growing up, as well as lots of cool videos on natural wildlife, pets as family, community obligations, chores, and loads of fun.

Happy birthday to my little Annabel, and I hope your daughter can be in a similar situation to mine at the same age, PalMD.

Get her a wooly mammoth instead. They even have dwarf varieties.

Something I learned from a palaeontologist in Helsinki: elephants' balls don't drop.

As a child, I would have had a better chance of getting an elephant than anything Barbie related. My mother had a ban on Barbie. Both my grandmother's thought Barbie was trashy and like to encourage me to to collect doll hour furniture.

Oh, just get her a mimmoth. Just don't let it get loose and get into the walls -- their tusks catch on wires.

Easiest way to build an elephant house: jack up the garage ten feet and build a loft so you can mount the elephant more easily. As for litterbox... eh. just run a stream through the floor for it to poop in.

@Luna - ftw! Girl Genius is popular with my proto-teen daughter. She also had Barbies, who seemed to have a pretty heavy bondage fetish, judging by the amounts of yarn used to tie them into elaborate scenes.

Did no one else save the world from monsters and dragons while dressed up in their princess costumes? Just because it's pink doesn't mean it can't be badass ;)

Who gives a rats behind?

FOR REAL ELEPHANT!!!!! :D :D :D I adore your daughter.

My brother subscribed to the "Xmas list made of taped-together pieces of paper so long it scrolls down the hall and is chock-full of impossible items like rocket launchers and M-16s" school of thought, which drove me (competitive sibling that I was) to the opposite extreme of "Oh, I don't know. Any little thing you get me will be just wonderful!"

Seeekritly, of course, I believed this approach netted me better and higher-quality prezzies than my brother got. The year I received the 3-foot-tall statue of a rearing white horse was the cherry-picked icing on my confirmation bias cake!

Great, now I want an elephant. A mimmoth might be nice too, except it'd probably eat through the computer cable and electrocute itself.