I am a not a Christmas person. I think December is a super fun month because the long nights are cozy and exciting and there are lots of parties and lights everywhere, but the actual 25th part has never done it for me. I’m married to someone who shares this lack of enthusiasm, which means the extent of our yuletide glee is getting wine-drunk while watching Elf and then turning our attention to Rob’s birthday and New Year’s Eve, which are both the following week.

But now we have a child and we don’t get to be the terrible neighbors in Christmas Vacation anymore. We have to become the Griswolds.

In that spirit, we took our kid to meet Santa. (Step one of Griswolding is creating a file of proof that you actually did Christmasy things, lest your child’s future therapist sadly whisper to his parole officer: “If only they had celebrated the holidays more enthusiastically…” ). We headed to Rawlings Conservatory figuring, if we were going to stand in line with 400 people, it may as well be in a beautiful place. To our absolute delight, Santa was sitting alone in a room filled with poinsettias and he and Lou posed for pictures and got along swimmingly. We strolled through the desert room, fed the massive koi fish in the pond, and headed to Hampden to catch the tail end of the Mayor’s Parade. A dream situation for our first weekend of letting go of Christmas disdain.

Our hearts slightly thawed, we headed to Amuse Toys in Fells Point where we spent the morning playing with toys and chatting with owner Claudia Towles about gifts for toddlers. Below is a gift guide for the little ones organized by your role in the giftee’s life. May the dim light of our Christmas spirit inspire yours to burn more brightly.

Gift For Your Boss’s Kid or Another Obligatory Recipient

The prices are right, they invite both imagination and fine motor skills to the table, and they both say, “I thought of your child this Christmas season because I would like a raise in Q1 2017.” Yes, the music set makes musical sounds (and sounds are the enemy of sleep) but the card writes itself (“A gift for your brilliant little Mozart! xoxo, Your Subordinate.”) And puzzles are always, always a good gift.

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Gift For Your Best Friend’s Kid or Best Frenemy’s Kid

My life can now be organized into two epochs: Pre-Melissa & Doug and Post-Melissa & Doug. I don’t know them—maybe they’re unhappily married or divorced, but still good friends or siblings or pseudonyms for two of the Shiloh-Pitts—either way they’ve recently become really important in our lives. They produce a ton of children’s toys (check them out online, but definitely buy from Amuse because they seem to choose the sturdiest stuff and you should shop local, you animal) and we’re slowly building our toy stockpile with their wares. The Latch Board is perfect to keep little hands busy at restaurants or on car/plane trips, and the pots and pans are an incredibly devious way to ensure your friend’s local wine shop stays open.

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Gifts For Your Niece or Nephew aka Future Hand-Me Downs

If you’re related to them, you’ve got to up the ante. And more importantly, you’ve got to give gifts you’ll want to inherit when it’s your turn to have kids. This camera is beautiful and will teach your young family members that before iPhones there were other means of producing images. And the Thunderlane is just extremely cool. Lou has a race car version and zooms around the house using it as an extension of his hand. They’re gifts that stand the test of time and will earn you some major familial points.

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Gift For Your Grandkid or Own Kid, Which Will Basically Because Home Décor

Little kids are excellent scooters and bouncers. Indulge their talents with the Rody Horse (whose name says Horse but whose ears scream Donkey) or the Micro Mini. Both look super cool, which really starts to matter as the assault of primary colored-toys take over your home, and both will last a long time and grow with your child. The Micro converts from a seated ride to a big kid scooter, making the price tag much friendlier to your wallet.

(Big thanks to Lou’s buddy, Will, for modeling the Rody. And also thanks to Will’s mom for putting shoes on her kid, illuminating the fact that our child is in socks in December. We bought him shoes immediately after this picture was taken, I promise.)

The ongoing construction working to beautify Broadway Square in Fells Point might not be complete just yet, but organizers of the upcoming Fells Point Fun Festival aren’t letting the work stop them from upholding the community’s 51-year-old tradition.

In a classic case of turning lemons into lemonade, organizers with the Fells Point Main Street Association (FPMSA) saw the construction as a reason to downsize the event this year. And, along with the smaller footprint, comes a renewed focus on the local community.

“We knew that without the square we would lose some of the vendor space,” says FPMSA president Nick Johnson, who also owns Su Casa. “We thought about how to still make it this phenomenal festival that people will love even with less vendors. And the answer was to turn it back into a real Fells Point festival, and showcase what’s here every day.”

The community street fair returns October 7-8, focusing in on more local bars, restaurants, artists, musicians, and small businesses than in recent history.

Johnson says that, in recent years, the festival has adopted more of a carnival feel—with offerings like inflatable prizes and eats on a stick. Now, he hopes to get back to the roots of the event—which originally started as a fundraiser to protect the waterfront neighborhood from demolition during the proposed federal highway expansion of 1966.

“If you look at it from a historical context, the festival started out as a celebration of the neighborhood so that the city would see that there was value to keeping it,” he says. “This is a chance to change things up and really start to emphasize what’s so phenomenal about this community day in and day out.”

Unlike previous years where vendors were set up inside Broadway Square, the smaller event will be primarily held along Thames Street this year. Although the Baltimore City Department of Transportation (DOT) estimates that construction on the square will be complete by Friday, September 29, FPMSA admittedly has its doubts.

“I was in an elevator this morning with the community liaison for DOT, and she was like ‘Aren’t you excited the square is going to be done on Friday?’” he recalls, with a laugh. “And I was like, ‘Have you been there lately?'” 

Johnson says that there is still a significant amount of bricklaying and concrete-pouring to be done, but, if anything, the association hopes that the fences around the square will be removed by next weekend so that guests can hang out in the center of the neighborhood during the festival.

Instead of organizers bringing in outside food purveyors, the eateries on Thames Street will set up booths in front of their restaurants and cafe-style seating in the street—a model which Johnson says will be similar to Annapolis’ reoccurring Dinner Under the Stars program. The festival’s open-container policy will once again be in effect this year (organizers got rid of the beer gardens in 2013), allowing attendees to consume alcohol anywhere on festival grounds with the purchase of a wristband.

Aside from restaurants, there has also been a boost in other Fells Point businesses that are vowing to participate this year. Among them is Amuse Toys, which will feature a tent outside, and various family-friendly activities including Smithsonian-recommended silhouette artist Tim Arnold on Saturday, October 7.

“We’ve participated before, but now it’s kind of a reenergized participation,” says Amuse owner Claudia Towles. “It’s going to feel very different. It only makes sense to celebrate the neighborhood by featuring those who make it so charming. Bringing the festival back with a local focus is key to the continued success of the community.”

Other highlights to look forward to include handmade wares for sale by local crafters, and a jam-packed live music lineup boasting only Maryland bands. Headliners are set to include local rocker—and Dangerously Delicious Pies owner—Rodney Henry, the bluesy Kelly Bell Band, and Annapolis-based reggae and ska favorite Bumpin Uglies.

The reinvigorated festival comes at a transformative time for the neighborhood, which recently welcomed Kevin Plank’s $60 million Sagamore Pendry Hotel, and was added to Waterfront Partnership’s purview earlier this month.

Johnson says that the evolution of Fells Point is something that he and longtime friend Bryan Burkert, who owns The Sound Garden, talk about often: “Whenever there is a new project announced we always joke, ‘This is going to be the one that takes us to another level,’” he says with a laugh. “But this year really marks the turning point. Once the square is done, there is very little to hold us back.”

Towles, too, sees the reinvigorated festival and all of the recent improvements as a larger vision for what’s to come.

“It’s turning the page on the focus of the neighborhood,” she says. “What’s new is shiny and beautiful, and certainly changes the dynamics, but it’s only serving to highlight what is already here.” 

Oh, winter. The only purpose you serve is making sure we don’t take the other three, superior seasons for granted.

Last winter our kid was a tiny bundle that stayed put where we left him. This winter he’s a curious, fast-walking, babbling human being and we’ve had to adjust the daily schedule to keep up. In the warmer months it’s not too hard to fill the days—long walks, playing in parks, outdoor concerts, perhaps a nice dip if you have a membership or live near a public pool. But in winter, things get more complicated. I certainly don’t have the constitution of, say, the Scandinavians, whose children are required to play outside no matter the thermometer, which means Lou becomes a bit more of an indoor kid this time of year.

Below are some suggestions for things to bring into your home to alleviate bad weather blues, as well as three activities to consider when you can’t take being stuck in your house for another second. Obviously, attractions like the Science Center, Port Discovery, and AVAM are always great options, as are classes at your local Enoch Pratt Free Library branch, the Walters Art Museum, and the BMA. But the list below considers your interests, if your interests include being afforded the opportunity to sip coffee or fit in a workout or meet other parents.

Play Kitchen

This play kitchen was Lou’s Christmas present. It took a good two hours and as many glasses of wine per parent to set up, but this thing is solid. We filled it with cute wooden food and little kitchen utensils and pots and pans and he conducts his own live cooking show each day. He chats to himself and presents plates of food and holds out his spoon for us to taste his concoctions. I hide cheddar bunnies in various containers and let his own curiosity (and ability to sniff out food like a hungry dog) handle snack time.

If you have four feet of free space in your home and a desire to sit quietly, alone, for ten damn minutes, I highly recommend this purchase.

Ball Pit

This ball pit has been the work horse of Lou’s toys since he was able to sit up. It’s grown from a crazy new environment in which to rest—buoyed by 250 plastic balls—to its current iteration as a place to hide things like tiny Apple TV remote controls and unopened cans of cat food. Lou assigns tasks to himself like working spastically and doggedly to remove the balls, one at a time, placing them in another nearby location like his kitchen’s sink or along the sofa cushions.

He burrows down into the balls and covers his eyes with them and patiently waits for the adults in the room to wonder aloud where he could possibly be. He tries with absolutely no luck to coax our cats into the ball pit, and though he has failed to get them to physically join him, his consolation prize is the unbelievable amount of cat hair that floats in and static-clings to the balls. (I should mention that if you live in a home with no animals, or hairless ones, don’t fret-—your child will still find joy in this activity even without swimming in a sea of dander.) This toy is versatile and fun and will grow with him for the next few years. I hope.

Play Café

We discovered Play Café one morning at 7:30 when we’d already been up for an hour and a half, and we were hungry, bored, and needed to get out of the house. I think I Googled something like “activities in Baltimore for babies before noon and also I’m hungry and we could use more friends with kids” and up popped Play Café.

The space in Hampden is low key and set up with a little café with a simple menu on one side and a play area on the other. We ate bagels and eggs and fed bites to Lou while he played. We ran into a friend and sipped coffee in the sunny room without worrying about the balance of keeping Lou occupied and being overly polite to the diners around us. It’s a really, really great place to go with children when you have cabin fever but aren’t in the head space to commit to a larger activity.

Amuse Toys, Quarry Lake

On Wednesdays and Fridays at 10:30 a.m., the back room of Amuse Toys is open for play. The toy set-up is fantastic—there are six or seven stations with things like trains and blocks, and it’s served as a good way for us to see what kinds of things Lou likes (or is ready) to play with. Now that he’s getting older and we’ve switched from survival mode to needing to actually nurture his brain, it’s getting way more expensive to keep this kid occupied. It’s been nice to let him loose in the play area and audition different types of toys before making the investment. Plus, much like Play Café, it’s pretty great to grab a coffee and interact with other grown-ups while your kid wanders around a room full of toys.

Stroller Strides

I joined this group in the brief interim between being healed enough from my C-section to do burpees and going back to work. In the summer, these fitness classes meet outside in Patterson Park and on Federal Hill, but in the winter they move indoors. I attended workouts in the Science Center and It. Was. Awesome. We ran through the exhibits, jumped up and down on the benches, and raced the stairs near the dinosaur area. Lou was too young to appreciate what was going on, but if your kid is 1 to 3 years, I bet they’d love it. The workouts are intense and include the kids where appropriate, and it was really nice to be around other moms while I was adjusting to my new role. The classes are not really scheduled for moms that work full time, so if you’re a fortunate lady who gets lots of time with your progeny and wants to fit in a workout, this class is for you.