I’ve been shopping for toys for my niece and nephew, and I accidentally got sucked down a Gorgeous Toys wormhole. My kids are all out of the baby/toddler-toy stage, and a LOT of their toys are UGLY and PLASTICKY. Feast your eyes on THESE riches instead:

Small Rainbow Stacker (photo from Amazon.com)

Plan Toys Balancing Cactus (photo from Amazon.com). I saw this in Ann Wyse’s gift post and SWOONED.
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Oh, man. William has been invited to a birthday party this weekend. Furthermore, he got the invitation yesterday, which means there is not much time to think. And William is the sort of child who, if you ask him what his BEST FRIEND SINCE FIRST GRADE’s favorite color is, will say “……Humm. Maybe….blue?” And if you say, “Well, what does she like to do? Does she have any hobbies?,” will say “…..Humm. Uh….” So on the topic of this weekend’s birthday child, a classmate he has known only since school started this year, I feel very lucky that he happened to know whether the child was a boy or a girl.

And eleven is a tricky age to buy for. I don’t even know what to get my OWN children in that age range. Well, there is nothing for it but to dig up some candidates, which is something I had to do before Christmas anyway.

Crafting With Cat Hair (photo from Amazon.com). I realize this is odd. I realize this is the sort of item that may need some further explanation, or perhaps would have been better suited to the unusual miscellany list from last week.
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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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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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When Paul and I got married, I had to write all the thank-you notes for our wedding gifts. Not only had he not been trained to write them, he hadn’t been trained WHY to write them. Purely aside from WANTING to tell the person who sent the gift how much you appreciated their kindness and generosity, the thank you note is a practical acknowledgment: it says “Yes, the gift successfully traveled from you to me.”

(photo of Dinosaur silhouette card from Simplicity Papers on Etsy)

In the case of children’s parties, it communicates to the parents who were not there that the gift went as planned: it wasn’t lost under the table, it was opened with knowledge of who it was from, etc. And it is such an excellent teaching opportunity for one’s own child on a subject it’s hard to remember to lecture about and practice: kindness should be appreciated, and the appreciation should be communicated, and here is the practical information about what to put between “Dear ____” and “Love, _____”. Also, you may not play with the present until you’ve written the note, so get on it.
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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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The twins turn six on their next birthday, and at our house that’s the Allowance Birthday. The kids always get a bank for their sixth birthday, and an envelope with their first allowance in it.

We gave my oldest child this Toysmith Cash Box, chosen primarily because that’s the kind of bank my brother had when we were growing up, so that’s what comes to mind when I think “bank for a boy” (I had a pink pig bank named Piggles). I bought it from a local toy store, not only to avoid the shipping costs but also because please note that the bank I’ve linked to requires you to be okay with them choosing the color for you, which, please.
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Here is the problem: The twins have been invited to the birthday party of a little girl turning five. I need two presents by this weekend. I’m looking for things that cost about ten dollars, although less would be even better. I have a few things I’m considering buying, and I also have some maybes on the gift shelf.

Stomp Rocket Jr Glow Kit (photo from Amazon.com). My mom has a stomp rocket and the kids LOVE it. I would prefer to get one WITHOUT the “glow” feature, but the glow one is marked down to $7.83 AND comes in a “junior” version, so…

Crayola Telescoping Pip-Squeaks Marker Tower (photo from Amazon.com). About $11.  Maybe it isn’t the same in everyone’s house, but at our house we have an endless need for marker replenishment.
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Oh, good, school’s out. No more lunch-making, bus-catching, homework-nagging. Now we turn our attention to scrabbling for ways to alleviate boredom.

Orb Factory Sticky Mosaics (photos from Amazon.com). Beth recommended the sticky mosaics, and I got the jewels one for Elizabeth for her birthday. Not only does Elizabeth totally love it, _I_ totally love it. I don’t usually like to do projects with children, but we’re on our fourth mosaic and I’m still having to prevent myself from working on it after she goes to bed. I bought the dinosaur set for ME to do (I’ll use the resulting pictures to decorate the room of dinosaur-loving Henry), and I can’t wait for it to arrive.  I wish they made sets for grown-ups.

They’re not CHEAP, it’s true:  about $17 for a box that includes 4 or 5 mosaics.  But after hesitating over the first set, I wouldn’t hesitate again:  well worth it for the fun, the fine motor skills development, the finished pictures (the three we’ve done so far are all on Elizabeth’s wall), and the project I LIKE doing with a child. If they sold them individually instead, for $3-4 each, I’d probably put one in my cart every time I went to the store.

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