Present Books
The Boy is developing an obsession with the toy catalogs that seem to arrive in the mail daily. He calls them present books. He flips through them for hours (okay, minutes, but in toddler time, it seems like hours) and makes demands about what he wants for Christmas. Right now he's lobbying hard for a $300 ride-on train which he has absolutely no chance of getting unless it turns out Santa really does exist and has his own shopping budget.
The avarice arrived quickly. He didn't really get Christmas last year. He knew that there was someone named Santa who had something to do with toys, but he didn't understand the whole bit about asking for presents. He had started to get it by his birthday in August when he made some gift requests but mostly just focussed on having a party with all his friends--the one thing we couldn't give him since we had just moved away from them.
I'm trying to deflect the focus on Christmas a little by talking about Thanksgiving, but The Boy's no fool. He sees the Christmas decorations (already up in so many places) and knows what's up. It's going to be a long holiday season.
Same here, except hurray, her birthday is in early December too. So OH my. She's a little older than The Boy, so I am trying to talk about budgets and money and how we can't buy everything we see on TV.
Posted by: AmyinMotown | November 18, 2008 at 02:56 PM
You're getting off easy... Gatito wants a $1,500 ride-on car thing from the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog! ;-)
Truth is, luckily, he likes his $1 Matchbox cars best of all. There were a whole bunch of them in the NY Times yesterday with an article on the auto industry and he took great joy in matching his to the ones in the paper (he had most, sad to say).
Posted by: cat, galloping | November 18, 2008 at 03:14 PM
Just wait. This week Thomas said, "The TV told me I need Thomas at Action Canyon" and "The TV told me I need THAT!"
Maybe subliminal messages are really there! lol
Posted by: taquita/toni | November 18, 2008 at 03:44 PM
My son does the exact same thing! We decided to pick one thing from each catalog to tear out and glue into a wish book that we will give to Santa. We explained to him that Santa will pick one thing from the entire book to bring to him so he has to really think about what he picks. I guess it reinforces the wrong message about Christmas, but...whatever!
Posted by: Monica | November 18, 2008 at 07:27 PM
I guess we're lucky. Max 'reads' those books, but he hasn't figured out that you could go somewhere to actually buy the stuff. Yet.
Posted by: Christine | November 18, 2008 at 11:53 PM
I remember when my son started that. Thankfully, he's now into Star Wars, which is really dirt cheap, unlike Thomas the Tank Engine and all those fancy wooden toys.
Posted by: chris | November 20, 2008 at 08:42 PM
I'm actually the one planning much in advance what my little girl will be needing for Christmas. Not that she needs anything at all.
Her favorite thing that comes in the mail is The Economist. She loves to find pictures of "Omama."
Posted by: Eva | November 21, 2008 at 09:30 AM
I want the ride on train too!! Is it like the one the dad on Silver Spoons had? That would be so cool.
Posted by: caramama | November 25, 2008 at 02:34 PM