I feel like all parents can relate to me when I say- despite my better judgment, I love spoiling our kids. Now I am a firm believer of living within your means, although around birthdays and holidays we definitely push the limit. I’m not sure what it is about buying gifts for our children, but we can’t help ourselves. Are we buying their love? Are we just getting a bunch of stuff to keep them busy and out of our faces? Regardless of the reason, we all love getting our children a gift that they love and watching their delighted little faces light up when they unwrap it. But sometimes (maybe a lot of times) we pick out some gifts that are complete duds.
Now that Christmas is in the rearview mirror, it’s time to reflect on our pointless purchases. Those gifts you bought that you probably shouldn’t have, but you just knew your child would love. How’d that work out for us? Many of our children’s gifts this year have gone unused, forgotten about, or broken. For science, I’m taking inventory of some of the gifts our children got this year and figuring how many have gone left unused and why. The ‘why’ part to this plays a big factor, are they not using it because it’s too advanced for them or because we just picked out a crappy gift? Let’s see.
Eli’s Gift rundown-
Rock and Roll Rainbow Piano– Thought it was cool, but not so interested in learning piano. but the babies LOVE IT so I count it as a medium. They love to walk across it and hear the music.
Build your own plane- Loved and used a lot; but it is now sadly in the broken toy graveyard.
Tinker toys– dud. My grandma has these toys at her house and he loves to use them and build things, like his “machine 2000” so she got him his own set, only to find out apparently that they’re only fun to use at GG’s house
DC super hero busy book– used twice. I thought for sure he’d love this because he loves super hero figurines. Nerp.
magic set– complete dud. Never used. Pieces lost. Mom and Dad fail.
The best gifts were the whoopee cushion ($2) and the liquid hourglass ($2). He uses both almost daily. Just goes to show, you don’t have to shell out a lot of money for your kids to be happy.
Camille’s gift rundown-
Fisher price laugh and learn smart stages chair– overall a good gift. She does use it often but she (as of now) only using the built in book feature. She LOVES turning pages so that part specifically is a hit
Fisher-Price Brilliant stack & Roll cups– Does it count as successful if she just smashes the cups all over the place and then holds them and walks around? We’ll say medium
Puzzles– age appropriate but she has no interest in them yet except for holding the pieces
Play house shape sorter– Camille is experiencing developmental delays and has no interest at all in stuff like this (which was why I bought it in the first place) but as of now she has no desire for this toy. dud. It is also missing some pieces, despite never being used.
Dollar Store dolly– Camille liked hers and she would walk around with them. Then cousin Olivia came over and ripped them limb from limb. So they went to dolly heaven after just one week.
So you may be wondering, if Camille isn’t using most of her toys, then what is she playing with?
Mastering Motherhood 