Christmas in April

It's Christmas around here. I am helpless to resist garage sales, and this past weekend our town held its annual city-wide sales. The kids had a birthday party to attend at 11 a.m. Friday, so going to a few sales was a perfect way to distract them from their eagerness to get to Ol' Chas. E. Cheese several hours early. Erik was on a quest for more Legos, which was fine with me. It kept him focused on a mission instead of begging for everything he saw. While the kids are pretty good about not begging for and not touching every toy in a store, it is a different world at a yard sale. Actually, it's harder to keep them out of the non-sale parts of people's garages -- curiosity! Now, Legos are not easy to find at a rummage sale. People either keep them forever or the early bird sale shoppers snap them up quickly. (And this town has Lego robotics teams! Second-hand Legos are gold!) We were successful at finding a few sets, though. Even though my inclination was to get them all, I forced myself to have Erik choose just one so as not to be greedy. To be fair, I let Anna choose a toy at the same sale and her choice was a small Beanie Baby snake. Huh. With that success, we headed to the party. On the way home, Anna wanted to go to more sales. Despite naptime, I couldn't bear to go inside on a day that was finally sunny after such a gloomy April. So we went home and walked to a few sales in our neighborhood. That's when the Erik hit a bonanza.

Always the train fan, Erik found a toy train at almost every sale with toys. Most of the ones he found were for toddlers, so I wasn't interested in bringing them home. He kept talking about finding trains, though, so I pointed out a bin of wooden train cars and said he could chose one. He started to look and then saw something far more wonderful across the table: a marble run. I never thought I'd hear him say this, but Erik announced, "That's better than trains." Unknown to Erik, there's a similar set hiding in the crawl space waiting for a gift-giving occasion, but, always the sucker for cheap, educational toys, I bought it for him. That, of course, meant we had to even things up and get another thing for Anna. Her choice was one toy hot dog from a bag of toy food. She would have been happy with that, but I really can't stand one more piece of faux edibles in the house. I did, however, point out the small shopping cart next to it and she was smitten. So much so, that she pushed it, slowly, all the way home. Half-a-mile. Sigh. Of course, I've already developed new gray hairs trying to referee the too-fast pushing of the baby-doll stroller in the house. So this wasn't my best choice, as far as Mom's sanity goes. It was, however, joy to Anna.

So, the damage was less than $13 for four new toys for two happy kids and one baby sleeper for the one who couldn't yet express his opinion on the matter. In a way, I felt guilty for spending any money on toys when we really, really don't need any. On the other hand, I made a point to have the kids make choices and not take home every cheap thing that caught their eye, even if it was a good deal. I had them give folks the money with the hope that they will start to learn that money must be exchanged to get stuff. I also couldn't feel any regret when, the next morning, Erik decided we needed to make one of the towers on the directions of his new marble run. Since I had to finish washing dishes, he got started and built half of it, by himself, following the directions precisely. He's faster at figuring out the directions than I am. Anna's trying to build things of her own creation. This English major is outdone by her own children in building yet again. And this is good.

Here's a picture of the tower Jamieson made for the kids. He's having as much fun with the "toys" as they are.