Christmas in... September?

So my husband and I started Christmas shopping. I know what you're thinking: it's September and it's still 105 degrees outside! Stay with me here: My husband is a retail manager and works a ton and I have college classes, an internship, a job on the weekends, and now we have a 9-year-old who we try to enrich with family outings and church gatherings. We decided that the best course of action was to get ahead of the game. We took The Girl (annonimously referring to my daughter) to school and decided to do a little shopping at Walmart because they have layaway.

Since we only have the one kid, spoiling was a must. This will be our last year with Santa and Hubs' first year playing Santa. I had to work really hard to convince The Girl that Santa was even real because an awful kid in her class last year decided to ruin it for her. I don't know who spoiled that kid's milk, but she was very upset by this. Anyway, I'm one of those moms that thinks about the other kids. Yes, I want to spoil mine, but I know that there are children less fortunate out there.

We live by this rule: small gifts are from Santa - Monster High dolls, Baby Alive, play make-up, etc - and the bigger things - bike and tablet - are from mom and dad. I'm trying to avoid her going to school after Christmas break and telling the kids Santa got her the big, expensive gifts when I know that Santa cannot afford to do that for every kid. We also do Toys For Tots and we pick out a gift or two to donate every year.

If you haven't checked out the Walmart layaway policy and are planning on doing it, let me enlighten you on how it works: You get a cart and go shopping for your kid. Once you pick out everything, in our case pile all the stuff in one cart and hope for the best, you take it all to the service desk. This is in the back of the store, not the front, don't be like us. We piled everything on the desk and sorted through what we were buying that day and what was Christmas layaway. We should've used two carts but it was 8 am and no one was behind us.

The friendly cashier was telling us about her $800 layaway for her 4 kids and I was instantly thankful for the one kid. After scanning a few items she informs us that some things don't qualify. The layaway policy is as follows: You pay and pick up at the same location, you have a 10% or $10 minimum deposit - whichever is greater, you cannot put clearance items on layaway, and each item has to be $10 or more. I did not know anything about the $10 minimum on items or that clearance items don't qualify. We picked out clearance Monster High items and some baby doll accessories that were $9.97. We also had Monster High bedding that doesn't count for layaway either.

After putting what did qualify on layaway we paid for the unexpected and moved on. My bedroom closet is now home to the start of Christmas. I'm pretty much done shopping for The Girl, but we still have a few small things on the list. She's never had a Christmas where she gets anything she actually wants.

All-in-all, I'm thankful it's over. Two hours shopping and setting up layaway then we went to our favorite diner for breakfast and coffee. All of this shopping was pre-coffee and no one likes me pre-coffee.

What are you doing to prepare? Are you like me and had to start early? What did your little ones request this year?