As many of you know, we don’t do Christmas presents. What we have always done instead, is New Year’s presents. We usually ˝write a letter˝ to Grandpa Frost as well, which is fun for the children and helps me pinpoint their priorities as fa as presents go. Customarily the ˝letter˝ consisted of cut-outs from toy catalogues stuck on a piece of paper; this year, however, both children managed to actually write a list of hopes and desires. Of course, the list was extensive and lengthy, including items well out of their age-range, like teething toys, or bits and pieces that would only add to the 347 of the same things we already have at home – a new ball for Jakob and another baby doll for Mia. We chose to duly ignore those. What we finally payed attention to were the toys children kept mentioning time and again in the weeks before the New Year’s.
In the end, they received three presents each plus an indefinite number of smaller ones from family and friends.
These days both my children are obsessed with scratch art paper to draw and write on. Therefore, when I saw this booklets a couple of months ago, I knew they would love them. Mia’s is pink and glittery; she fills her pages with hearts, flowers and princesses. Jakob’s, on the other hand, is a more elaborate kind of a booklet. There is a story about space, with an illustration to scratch out on each page. The final illustration is on you to decide, depending on how you want the story to end. ˝It’s perfect for our planet-loving little boy, ˝ I said to Marko one of these evenings when I saw Jakob working on it. ˝If only they played football in space! ˝ Marko laughed.
Having spent the summer with the grandparents, the children were spoilt to a lot of tv, thus discovered innumerous new cartoon. Among them there was Super Wings and Jakob has kept mentioning Jerome ever since.
Mia’s equivalent was … drumroll … a Lego set! In our defence, it was bought months ago (thus before the insane amount we brought into our home lately) and with the specific intention of promoting strong, independent girls with both of our children. Jakob somehow got the idea the only superheroes are boys and Mia went along with it. Wanting my girl to be brave and self-confident just as much as my son, I was thrilled to discover the Lego Super Hero Girls line.
The biggest present Mia received was a WeSing set for Wii. She has been begging for a karaoke set for nearly a year, eyeing them whenever we happened to be in any toyshop. Her two best friends have a shiny pink toy version of it and it took us months to convince her that a proper set, maybe linked to the Wii console we already own, was a much better idea; it would be harder to break, she would overgrow it much later than the toy version plus there would be the visual component as well. And, oh Golly, are we glad we succeeded! The SingIt has been put into use daily since the New Year’s eve. Both, Mia and Jakob love to sing to it, discovering new songs each time and even the adults have dipped into it. It’s mildly upsetting yet oddly compelling singing along the SpiceGirls’ Wannabe reminiscing about your youth while observing your child’s puzzled expression.
Jakob’s big gift was a Hot Wheels track where he can race all of his cars. It’s big and it’s loud yet so much fun!
Happy New Year!