This week a little virus sped through our household: sore throats and 103-degree fevers for everyone except me. If I ever wondered if I might have been a good and kind and angelic nurse in, say, an army tent with rows of patients, the answer is “Probably not.” Six people asking for more juice, more water, a blanket, the remote, maybe another piece of toast, was pretty much all I could handle pleasantly, and probably the adverb “pleasantly” is pushing it a bit, even in much nicer conditions and with much less upsetting illness/injuries than would be in an army tent.

There are certain things I keep in the house always, so I have them on hand when illness visits us and don’t have to add “running to the store” to my toast-fetching list:
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This was Elizabeth’s most successful tonsillectomy-recovery present:

Ravensburger Hello Kitty Hatbox Tin puzzle (photo from Amazon.com). She saw it when we were looking for something else, and she instantly wanted it. I balked at the price: why was it $14, when there are 100-piece Hello Kitty puzzles at Target for $3.99? I assumed the difference was in the tin (instead of a cheap cardboard box), and I didn’t want to spend so much money when I didn’t even know that she would LIKE to put together a puzzle.

So her loving aunt and uncle bought it for her, and I bought her a $4 one. And OH I SEE. No, it’s not the just the tin, it’s that the puzzle inside the tin is WAY better quality than the $4 one. Much larger overall size, and the pieces are thicker, glossier, sturdier, and fit together better. Furthermore, Elizabeth must have put it together twenty times that first week, and keeps bringing it out now to put it together again. And to my surprise, _I_ like doing the puzzle WITH her: it’s one of the few parent-child play activities I’ve found where I’m not suffering. When it started getting too easy for me, I did new things: only doing the pieces with no picture on them; only doing the trickiest parts and not peeking at the box while working on them; working on the puzzle while the picture was upside-down (as in, I saw the kitty face upside down, not as in the puzzle was face-down on the table); etc.

Where was I? Oh, yes: the surprising success of the puzzle. So now I’m looking for more puzzles in tins (100-piece is pretty much exactly her ability level), and wondering if “being in a tin” consistently means good things about the quality of the puzzle inside, or if it’s kind of hit-and-miss. At the very least, a tin means not having to try to figure out how to slice one of those cardboard ones open without destroying the box.

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I’ve been considering a tattoo. At this point, I don’t know if I’ll actually get one, or if I’ll get one and then get lots more, or if I’ll decide I don’t want one after all, or if it will be something I’ll dither about for the rest of my life.

For now, I am having fun experimenting with temporary tattoos. It’s a good way to experiment with size and placement and whether I actually LIKE art on my skin, and it’s been fun to go to the pool and have all the other parents wondering if I actually have a big unicorn on my upper arm. I’m totally lying: I have not gone to the pool with a temporary tattoo. It’s because I’m worried people will either (1) think it’s real or (2) know it isn’t, but think I think they think it is.

But! We’ve been having fun with them at home. The ones I bought the most of are only $1.50 a book (they’re small books—those little Dover ones that are about the size of a notecard), and contain about the same square inchage of tattooage whether there are 4 largeish ones or 20 small ones. Amazon has them on their “4-for-3″ deal, so if you buy four books, one of them will automatically be free. If you buy eight books, two will be free. And so on. (Make sure you check each listing to make sure that one has the “4-for-3″ deal mentioned under Special Offers. All the ones I got did—but there are other sellers selling things on Amazon, and of course theirs don’t qualify.) All photos below are from Amazon.

Henna tattoos. This combines the tattoo fascination I’ve never acted on with the henna fascination I’ve never acted on. I also got the Henna Paisley and the Henna Floral ones.
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William, Robert, and Elizabeth have all been invited to a birthday party this weekend, so I need to come up with three presents for a 10-year-old girl. I could use a hand, if you have a minute—and then we’ll have this later as a reference for the next time we need it!

She likes cats, and she likes anything cute or fuzzy. She likes Phineas & Ferb, and SpongeBob Squarepants. She likes crafts. She plays soccer. She’s William’s age and grade and is mostly William’s friend, but she plays with everyone when she’s here.

Normally I aim for about $10 for a party gift (in this case, from each of the three children), but I’d be willing to go a little higher.

First candidate: Aurora Plush Fluffee Fluffy Tails (photo from Amazon.com), about $9.00. Most households already have more stuffed animals than they can handle—and yet, the sight of this cat reduced our household to “OHHHHhhhhhhhhhh!!!”s of cuteness.
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My 6-year-old daughter will soon be having a tonsillectomy. Even though this is a totally routine outpatient procedure, I am fretting. And one way I deal with anxiety is by preparing—or perhaps more accurately, over-preparing. I’d like to buy her a number of fun things to entertain her during the two weeks the doctor suggests we plan for her to be in a nest on the couch, and I’ve been distracting myself with the decisions.

Our Target has some of the Littlest Pet Shop Petriplets sets on clearance, so I bought Elizabeth the kitties one (photo from Amazon.com) which has three cats and a little triple cat-perch, and the bunnies one which has three bunnies and a little triple carrier. These don’t seem to me to have high play-value, but they’re cute and she likes cute, and they can be played with from a couch nest.

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What I laughingly call a “craft bin” at our house is in fact a tower of disaster: a bunch of stacking baskets (like these) that we got for free at the dump, filled to a teeter with the litter of a decade’s worth of “Just toss that in the craft bin.” Several half-used packages of card stock. Sheets of felt, partially cut into. Rubber stamps—where is the stamp pad? Stickers that came with charity pleas. A protractor that came in a kit of school supplies. Foam letters spilling out of a bag. Empty Play-Doh containers—what the heck? A package of beads, a package of jingle bells, a package of popsicle sticks. A bunch of craft books we always think someone will want to leaf through for ideas, but no one ever does. Clearly there needs to be a heavy cleaning-out, but this is the sort of area where as soon as I throw something away, a child wants it for a project.

Despite the oppressive nature of our own craft bins (and, as I know from babysitting and nannying, other people’s craft bins), craft supplies remains one of my favorite gifts for children’s parties. They’re the kind of gift that tends to pass parental inspection, even with all the things parents can object to (”girl” vs. “boy” toys, violent toys, toys that perpetuate beauty culture, toys from particular countries, princess toys, a certain brand of toys with an amusement-park tie-in, TV/movie-tie-in toys, “cheap plastic crap,” etc. etc. etc.), and in general they tend to be gifts that work no matter what the particular child is interested in: not every child likes crafts, of course, but statistically-speaking (and if you have to take a certain risk with the gift anyway), more of them like crafts than like, say, Bakugan.

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Henry has recently cooled on his dinosaur obsession, and seems to be starting up a new thing with knights and castles. His birthday is next month, so I’m looking for ideas.

Fisher-Price TRIO Wizard’s Castle (photo from Amazon.com). This is the castle Henry liked best of all the ones we looked at. My mom bought it for her playroom right away when I told her.

Knights to go with it. (Photo from Amazon.com.) And more knights, so there can be fighting.
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William turned 10 recently, and he had his first Big Friend Party (that is, the party was big: his friends are all standard-issue sizes), and he got a lot of presents he liked. This is the sort of thing that seems like it would make a good resource, since it seems like I am constantly feeling desperate to think of a good gift idea for a child I don’t know—especially when MY child, who is allegedly a friend of the birthday child, shrugs when asked what the birthday child might like.

Toysmith Crystal Mining Kit (photo from Amazon.com). This was the biggest hit, I’d say. It was a block of plaster with crystals hidden inside, and Will spent several intense sessions working on chipping them out. It was a bit messy, but cleaned up easily. And there were more crystals in his chunk of plaster than were advertised on the box, which was pleasing. And now Will’s older brother is saving his allowance to buy his own kit, and Will’s younger sister has been saying she hopes she gets it for HER birthday. It’s under $10, so I’m also buying one for the gift shelf for future birthday parties my kids attend.
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We have the kids choose presents for the other parent at birthdays and Christmas, because it’s such good practice in gift-selection techniques: “What would the other person like? Not what would YOU like, but what would THEY like? No, Daddy doesn’t like sour gummy worms, that’s YOU who likes sour gummy worms”—and so on.

Wrapping the gifts is a pain. I am not the “Patient Teacher” personality type, I’m the “Here, I Can Do That Faster and Better and Easier Myself” personality type. I try to overcome this because I know it’s important, but a person can only stretch so far. So Paul came up with what I think is the best idea ever for letting children do their own gift-wrapping without the parent losing his or her mind.
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Last week, Stimey asked on Twitter for gift ideas for a 9-year-old boy. She was asking for a birthday, but the holidays are coming up. I’ve had two 9-year-old boys so far, and they do vary from boy to boy, but here are some of the things that have been successes:

Magic tricks (photo from Amazon.com).  If you can’t stand the “Mom, look at this!  …Oh, wait.  Okay, now look!  …Oh, wait.  Okay, NOW,” it’s a great gift.

Sculpey modeling compound (photo from Amazon.com).
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