Help! It's Been So Long Since I Cared, I Don't Remember What To Do!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Non-humor-impaired Mother of a 10, a 13, and a 16 here. [chanting feverishly] (One more day, one more day, one more day…) ]

I’m going to go ahead and give real advice, just in case somebody really wants to know what to do.

What Dublos said, about free-for-all vs. carefully orchestrated present-opening.

Age 7 is definitely too young to comprehend the “one huge present equals X number of small presents” equation. The Dollar Store (a.k.a. Dollar Bill, Dollar Tree, All For One) is SUPERB for filling in the blanks at the last minute. A 7 doesn’t care whether the object under the paper cost about 20 cents to manufacture in China and will fall apart in less than 10 seconds. It’s a present, and it’s his, and that’s all that matters.

Don’t wrap clothes for the 7 at all, just hand them over in the Wal-Mart bag. Or warn him ahead of time, when he grabs the box and starts to rip paper–“oh, um, that’s just clothes”. He’ll like you better for it. To small children, wrapping clothes in Christmas paper is a kind of lie that certain grownups tell. Or if you must wrap the clothes, and don’t want to go the “tip-off” route, put them in very plain tissue paper, preferably in an “old lady” color, like lavender. That will give him a visual cue not to get too excited.

DON’T put pants in one box and shirt in another and think for a moment that it counts as two presents, 'cause it actually counts in the negative presents. “Oh, man, two in a row, with just clothes…” He’ll never trust you again.

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Negative presents? Ooh. I never thought of that. Thanks for the heads-up, DDG.

(minor hijack)

DDG, I’ve keep meaning to ask–what are the stories behind the names you call your kids here on the board (La Principessa, Bonzo, and The Cat Who Walks Alone)? Those are just great, and I just know there’s a winning tale regarding all of them.

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Few suggestions for the little tot (babyGuy)

Moby - Play
U2 - All that you can’t leave behind

He’ll be eternally grateful (Remember: Never too young…).

Separate wrappings, of course.

(As for the real intent of the OP, my birthday falling on December 24th, both it and Christmas were usually combined. A couple of times, my parents - the cads! - managed to forget about it altogether (as did I, BTW:D). And, being an only child, the ‘jealousy factor’ never came into play.)

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Boxes!

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Definitely boxes. And plain white boxes like the stores give out for clothes do not count, no matter what is in them, because there is no paper to rip. Go ahead and use those boxes for the clothes, but not for anything else.

Strangely enough, boxers count in the number of gifts for the Rugrat here (as long as they are wrapped), but not any other clothes. I think it’s because he (and not his mother) puts them on his Christmas list. (One year socks counted, again because he requested them himself.)

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Persephone,

So, present opening has come and gone… what did you end up doing and how did it go over?

-Doug

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As it turns out, it didn’t really matter. Junior was just too darn happy this Christmas to care. :slight_smile:

I ended up taking the “number of boxes” suggestions though. But he really wasn’t counting.

Before he left out house on Tuesday, he did tell me that this year had been the very best Christmas he’d ever had. Not a big surprise, really. He got to celebrate it four times–with his mom, my mom, us, and my dad. He made out like a bandit. But it wasn’t just the gifts. I could see in his face that he was just happy to be with a fairly normal family, and he felt really loved.

Thanks for asking, dublos! :smiley:

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I wasn’t ignoring you, Pers, it just took me a while to get back over here.

Well, I use the names mostly to protect their privacy. The Cat and Bonzo both look in on the SDMB from time to time (Bonzo is fascinated by the way people are allowed to say “fuck” in the Pit–they’re not allowed to do that over at the pokemasters.com MB). And I assume The Cat at least has probably told some of her friends about this place (they are SO grownup…) So, just kind of “because”.

The names just express their personalities. There aren’t any specific stories that go with them. The Cat Who Walks Alone is a rather solitary, self-sufficient creature. Even as a baby, she never minded being “parked” in her infant seat while Mommy washed dishes or something. (The other two just HATED that. Washing dishes with a baby on your hip is so much fun.) As a two-year-old she was always perfectly happy to play by herself, private little games that involved stacking cans of tomato paste from the pantry that nobody could figure out.

Bonzo is the family goof, definitely. He’s the one with the funny mouth noises that make us “splort” our creamed spinach all over the dinner table. He’s the one who finds incredibly obscene yet hilarious things to do with Barbie and Ken and a bucket of Beast Wars Transformers action figures. He’s the one who came up with Barney’s Evil Twin Bernard, and Clarence the Jackalope (family stories, only funny to us, sorry).

La Principessa is the imperious Princess, with wild and passionate mood swings. With her, it’s always either “the greatest thing since sliced bread” or “the end of civilization as we know it”. There’s no middle ground. She’s our resident bi-polar depressive. “Get her some lithium!” we shout from the living room, as Madame races up and down the stairs, frantically searching for the lost shoe that will of course turn up right next to where the first shoe was. She’s the one who comes home from school and plays School, with a chalkboard and all the dolls lined up on the couch. She played School nearly every day last summer, all summer. I see her as Grace Kelly, the new schoolmarm, teaching school for a few years and then marrying Prince Rainier.

And the Better Half is just that, my Better Half. Actually, I first read the term in some book or other, applied to a wife, so I can’t take credit for it.

Anyway, thank you for asking. :slight_smile: You are most kind, to allow me to brag on my kids like this.

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Thanks, DDG! I had a feeling it was attitude-related. Those are just great names, and from your descriptions of them, they DO fit. :smiley: