Preliminary Hanukkah thoughts
My kids are the best. No, seriously. They really are. Despite the undeniable evidence that they are spoiled rotten, when I took them along to Target on Thursday to buy Hanukkah presents for their cousins and told them that they could get ONE thing each for themselves, they wandered up and down all the toy aisles, and eventually begged for... magic markers.
Yes, magic markers. I bought my children $10 worth of magic markers as their Hanukkah presents, and they were so happy they practically cried. After LG opened his magic markers last night, he told me, "Mama, these are the best markers ever! This is the best Hanukkah present ever! You are the best mama ever!"
Magic markers. Do you have any idea how many magic markers we already have in this house?
They don't care. They are delighted. LG has an old drug-store art pack with magic markers in it that he's been referring to as his "private" art supplies for months. ("Private" in this case should be interpreted to mean, "Baby Blue is not to use them without LG's express permission, notarized and in triplicate.") So Baby Blue wanted nothing more than her own "private" magic markers. She picked out a box of ten and clutched them breathlessly in the shopping cart, yelling with delight, "I have MY private! I have my very OWN private!" It was simply the icing on the cake (so to speak -- actually, Baby Blue hates icing) that I also bought her a plastic pencil box ($1.49) in which to keep her private.
In fact, the only disturbing thing about the whole Hanukkah experience so far has been that, when I asked for LG's help in picking out a gift for his cousin, the Original Emmy, he looked up and down the Lego/Playmobil aisle, shook his head, and announced that we had better go to the "girl aisle." It wasn't hard to catch his meaning -- there were two adjacent aisles draped in pink and littered in Bratz dolls. When I nixed that idea, he shrugged gamely and proceeded to pick out whatever item he could find in the non-girls' aisle that was either pink or decorated with Disney princesses. I finally got irritated with him and snapped that HE was allowed to like anything he wanted, so why did his cousin have to like only things that were pink or had princesses? He blinked a couple of times while he thought about that, and then decided that the Original Emmy should get the same "best ever" marker set that he was getting. Which seemed like an excellent choice all around.
Anyway. Of course, now that I've finished extolling my kids' marvellous lack of materialism this holiday season, we are soon to head out to the Fun Family Hanukkah Party, where they will each receive approximately 1.5 trillion presents from my mother. Yes, I know that I could talk to her about buying fewer presents, or that we could donate the new presents, or donate the old toys, or yada yada yada. Honestly, these are just not battles that I care about fighting right now. If the worst thing my mom ever does as a grandparent is buy the kids too many presents, I can live with that. And so can Mr. Blue, even though he grumbles about it mightily. Well, it will give him something to focus on so he doesn't have to think about all the other grumble-worthy elements of the afternoon.
I hope y'all are having a nice weekend. One technical note: HaloScan is getting hit with a spam attack today. I've enabled comment moderation for a little while until things die down. Given HaloScan's general competence in this area, I expect that everything will be back to normal soon.
Yes, magic markers. I bought my children $10 worth of magic markers as their Hanukkah presents, and they were so happy they practically cried. After LG opened his magic markers last night, he told me, "Mama, these are the best markers ever! This is the best Hanukkah present ever! You are the best mama ever!"
Magic markers. Do you have any idea how many magic markers we already have in this house?
They don't care. They are delighted. LG has an old drug-store art pack with magic markers in it that he's been referring to as his "private" art supplies for months. ("Private" in this case should be interpreted to mean, "Baby Blue is not to use them without LG's express permission, notarized and in triplicate.") So Baby Blue wanted nothing more than her own "private" magic markers. She picked out a box of ten and clutched them breathlessly in the shopping cart, yelling with delight, "I have MY private! I have my very OWN private!" It was simply the icing on the cake (so to speak -- actually, Baby Blue hates icing) that I also bought her a plastic pencil box ($1.49) in which to keep her private.
In fact, the only disturbing thing about the whole Hanukkah experience so far has been that, when I asked for LG's help in picking out a gift for his cousin, the Original Emmy, he looked up and down the Lego/Playmobil aisle, shook his head, and announced that we had better go to the "girl aisle." It wasn't hard to catch his meaning -- there were two adjacent aisles draped in pink and littered in Bratz dolls. When I nixed that idea, he shrugged gamely and proceeded to pick out whatever item he could find in the non-girls' aisle that was either pink or decorated with Disney princesses. I finally got irritated with him and snapped that HE was allowed to like anything he wanted, so why did his cousin have to like only things that were pink or had princesses? He blinked a couple of times while he thought about that, and then decided that the Original Emmy should get the same "best ever" marker set that he was getting. Which seemed like an excellent choice all around.
Anyway. Of course, now that I've finished extolling my kids' marvellous lack of materialism this holiday season, we are soon to head out to the Fun Family Hanukkah Party, where they will each receive approximately 1.5 trillion presents from my mother. Yes, I know that I could talk to her about buying fewer presents, or that we could donate the new presents, or donate the old toys, or yada yada yada. Honestly, these are just not battles that I care about fighting right now. If the worst thing my mom ever does as a grandparent is buy the kids too many presents, I can live with that. And so can Mr. Blue, even though he grumbles about it mightily. Well, it will give him something to focus on so he doesn't have to think about all the other grumble-worthy elements of the afternoon.
I hope y'all are having a nice weekend. One technical note: HaloScan is getting hit with a spam attack today. I've enabled comment moderation for a little while until things die down. Given HaloScan's general competence in this area, I expect that everything will be back to normal soon.
Labels: Incidents and accidents
posted by Phantom Scribbler at 11:41 AM 
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