Gifts for Kids

After attempting to reason with said toddler while he screamed incessantly for a doll with creepy red eyes of the devil, I handed him a peanut butter sandwich for distraction and hot-footed it out of there.

“Aw, what a mean mum!” I hear you all collectively groan. But hear me out. My son has enough toys to entertain a large daycare centre on rotation for a month. As the first child in my group of friends and a grandchild who lives interstate from his Nanny and Poppy, people tend to send him toys and buy him gifts whenever they come to visit. And that’s lovely, really. But when you live in a two bedroom apartment and your garage is already filled with ski gear, furniture and still unpacked boxes of who-knows-what, there comes a point when you need to implement an unwritten rule of “no more toys, please”. This is especially true when said toddler would prefer to empty out the kitchen cupboards or fill the laundry basket with dog treats and push it around the house like a wheelbarrow, stopping only to add more random items. Just last week I went to do the laundry and found Elmo, a toy car, the dog brush and a bag of Doritos in the washing machine.