I’ve always felt that I had about the best timing for a birthday possible. Mine is in June, which means that growing up, I never went more than six months without a crapload of presents. From the parental perspective this is a pretty sweet deal as well. You have six months to think up good present ideas inbetween festivities. Two of my own monsters are not so lucky. We’ve got one birthday right before Thanksgiving and another right after Christmas. That’s a long dry spell. More importantly (because it is *my* problem) that is a lot of pressure to come up with good ideas all at once.
bah.
These kids also have a pretty big family, so ideas must also be provided to aunts and uncles. I’m just not very good at ideas. That’s a lie. I’m pretty good with ideas, but I’m GREEDY as all get out with them. I want to be the one giving them the awesome present that will define their childhood, like my growing up skipper doll or my white plastic record player.
You know how I managed to acquire those two magnificent gifts? The Sears Wishbook. I basically used it as my own personal shopping list. I just circled what I wanted, and sometimes it would magically appear. What I didn’t realize at the time, was that this was probably as good a deal for my folks as it was for me. They never had any question what I wanted. It was right there. Circled. Multiple times. In pen. With a big “E” next to it. By the way, some benevolent soul on Flickr has managed to scan several Sears Wishbooks of that era in their entirety. If you are so inclined, you really should check them out. It is such an outstanding trip down memory lane. Here’s 1977, 1979, 1980, but he’s got tons more.
There is no equivalent now for the Sears Wishbook. We get tons of catalogs, sure, but they just aren’t of the same weight. Anyway, on Sunday I had this idea that I would take the kids to Toys R Us, and bring a notepad and we would walk around doing basic recon on what kinds of things they might like for Christmas. No surprise, they were totally into it. I ended up with some really good ideas, written in pencil, in my own little wishbook.
