My youngest baby is turning 6 next month. Let’s not talk about how strange that feels; let’s just talk about what I’m considering getting him for his birthday. Perhaps you have a similar child turning 6 (or 5 or 7), or perhaps you have a birthday party to go to.

Penguin bank (photo from Target.com). We give our kids a bank and their first allowance at their 6-year-old birthday party. For my first two kids, I chose a bank for them; but with the younger three, it’s worked better to let them choose one. I discuss it with them casually while at the store display a few months before the birthday, and then go back later and buy the one they liked. Henry chose this penguin. (I would have rooted for this owl if they had it in the stores.)

Webkinz lion (photo from Amazon.com). After last week’s post, it will not surprise you to hear that he is getting a Webkinz. Every other family member (well, except Paul) has or has had one, and now Henry wants one. He said “lion” immediately when I asked what animal, but then later on he said, “Wait. Do they have sharks?” (They do.) So there may need to be more deliberation.
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Vanessa asked if I’d do a post on college graduation gifts. At first I misread the request as high school graduation gifts, so I was all, “Hot pot and a box of Ramen! X-long sheet set! Gift certificate for pizza place near dorms!”

College graduation is a little trickier, because the way people live in college (and their plans for what’s next) can vary so much. It’s similar to buying a wedding gift, where it depends if the couple are leaving their parents’ houses for the first time, or if they’ve been living together for years, or if they’re combining two households. Some college kids live in the dorms the whole time, so they could use “first apartment” gifts. Other kids get an apartment at some point during college and so they pretty much have everything—oh, except the coffee pot belongs to this roommate, and the silverware belongs to that roommate, and the furniture was all found at the curb, and actually they do kind of need new-apartment stuff. Some kids are going to move back in with their parents for awhile; some are launching off next week to a new job in another state.

So my first recommendation is to take the post-college plans into consideration, and see if you can buy something that would be useful for that. Helpful! The old “Hey, how about buying them something they’d like and/or could use!” gift suggestion!
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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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My older son is going to be 4 in a few weeks, and I was initially going to write a post covering Birthday Present Ideas for Four-Year-Olds and include all the little product images and links and so on . . . but I have a related topic I’d rather talk about. It has to do with greedy children, and more specifically, how not to raise them.
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I have often thought that caring for a baby in their first year of life is like watching the lights come on in a house, one by one. First they’re all unfocused and mewly, then they’re laughing and doing that funny stationary leg-marching business, and soon they’re entirely purposeful and able to reach right out and grab what they want. Click, click, click, one room after another gets lit up in their brains, and their worlds open wider and wider.

If that’s true, then the stage around 18 months is like having all the lights on at once, blazing away, while a mad scientist operates the giant electrical switch powering it all. “MOO HOO HA HA HAAAA!” shrieks the apparition in the white coat, hair standing on end and eyes pointing in two different directions. “HA HA HA—WAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

Young toddlers are insane, is what I’m saying. They’re physically capable of outrunning you, yet they have no sense of self-preservation. Their emotions are as wild and unpredictable as a storm on the high seas, and the smallest trespass will send them flinging their bodies to the floor in order to throw a tantrum loud enough to detonate an adult’s eardrums at fifty paces. They kick, they slap, they throw things, they scream, they eat things that aren’t meant to be eaten while hysterically refusing things that ARE meant to be eaten.

Thank god they’re still formed entirely of Pillsbury thigh-rolls with baby-soft faces and the occasional desire to cuddle, because in my limited experience this is the age which most strongly begs the question, Would It Be Wrong To FedEx My Child to Octo-Mom, Since She Apparently Can’t Get Enough of this Crap?

So! Let’s talk about ways to survive the 18-month zone, and by that I mostly mean “let’s open up comments because I sure don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
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