This afternoon my four year old daughter was looking through one of the many catalogs that come to our house unbidden. She calls them her “magazines” and really believes that they are subscriptions that come for her, much the same way her brothers get Big Back Yard or Calliope.

She found some some tacky doll thing that she began pestering me to buy. And I used my standard reply that I use 364 days out of the year, “Wow, you had better put that on your list to mail to Santa!”

“Email?” she asked.

“No, regular mail like at the post office!” I replied with an amount of enthusiasm that indicated this was something novel and unusual.

“I wonder why Santa doesn’t have email?” my 6 yr old mused out loud, to no one in particular.

“I bet they don’t have wireless up there in the North Pole.” my 8 yr old answered.

They both nodded in agreement.