Works For Me Wednesday: Gift Wrap

Today is the last day in my son’s life that he will only be one year old. To divert myself from being ridiculously sentimental about it, I’m going to devote a few minutes of my time today to a Works for Me Wednesday post.

Anyone with a small child knows that any gift-receiving special occasion involves an excited child tearing the wrapping paper off of an incredibly awesome toy that they intend to play with immediately.

The joy fades when the child realizes that the awesome toy is impossible to remove from its packaging without adult assistance. The unlucky adult then realizes that the tools necessary to remove the packaging includes a pair of scissors to cut the tape off the box, dexterous fingers to remove the tiny metal twist ties, and inevitably, a tiny screwdriver to remove the tiny screws preventing the toy’s escape from the box. It’s also inevitable that no one will have a tiny screwdriver in their pocket at this moment and the child will be reduced to tears. If you are incredibly unlucky, the toy will also require batteries and fate always ensures that you don’t have the correct size batteries lying around in a drawer when you need them to be.

Last night I was wrapping birthday gifts for David and had a brilliant idea. Actually, it’s a suggestion that I got from another parent a long time ago and it happened to pop into my brain at an opportune moment.

If you are wrapping a gift for a young child, remove the packaging FIRST. Yes, the box is pretty and confirms that the toy inside is brand new. Yes, the gift wrap will look hideous without a box inside. Yes, the wrapped gift will look like it fell out of Santa’s sleigh and got run over by a school bus.

BUT

The child will unwrap the gift, shriek with joy, and then play with that awesome toy right away. No tantrums and no tiny screwdrivers necessary.

Hurray!

I think I’m almost ready for David’s 2nd birthday. Now, all I need is a Prozac…

That’s what Works for Me!

The Agony Continues

I just spent my entire lunch hour at Giant Eagle agonizing over which birthday cake to buy for David to take to daycare for his class to share on Thursday.

On an ordinary day, the decision would be simple. $10 cake or $28 cake? Obviously, the $10 cake!

Today, the decision was much more difficult.

What does the guilty mother that will be working on her child’s second birthday buy for his birthday celebration that he will have with his friends while his guilty mother is working?

Does she buy the expensive, professionally decorated Elmo cake that he will be thrilled to have and forget an hour later?

Or does she buy the inexpensive, simple white cake with sprinkles and write his name on it with decorating gel?

Or does she buy the mid-range, elegantly decorated cookie-cake with icing balloons on it to impress him?

Or does she agonize over this decision for an hour, then call Daddy at work for his advice?

She calls Daddy and he tells her to buy the $10 cake and write his name on it. He calmly reminds her that his friends will be wearing more cake than they will be eating, so it doesn’t make sense to spend $28 on a cake that will only be used to frustrate many mothers that are responsible for washing the laundry for the children wearing this cake.

Mommy relents and buys the cheap cake.

She’ll make up for it by going to Babies R Us tomorrow during lunch and buying the Birthday Boy shirt for him to wear.

Birthday Blues

I think its only fair to warn you that I’m going to be sentimental this week. David’s second birthday is on Thursday. Where has the time gone??

Rather than have a party at our house this year infested with relatives that just won’t leave, we decided to take the kids to Kalahari Indoor Waterpark for the weekend. I gotta tell you that I have never been to an indoor waterpark, but just the thought of putting on my bathing suit in public in the dead of winter is absolutely thrilling to me. But I knew David would love it, so how could I deny him this? I can’t wait to see his face when he sees the pool!

For his birthday on Thursday, Mommy and Daddy will be taking him to the indoor playground at Chick-Fil-A. We’ll pretend that we expect him to eat his chicken nuggets before he climbs out of the high chair to play. After dinner, we’ll do cake and candles at home and David will un-wrap his gifts. Daddy was cool enough to do the gift shopping this year and his choices of a Play-Doh Duffel Bag and the Play-Doh Fun Factory are going to be a hit!

I hope I don’t cry this year…

Can You See Me Now?

My dad and I both have cellular phone service with Verizon, and its not uncommon to hear either one of us invoke their slogan, “Can you hear me now?,” whenever my Dad tries to use his phone from home. He has cell phone coverage everywhere on God’s green earth except for in his house. You would think he lives out in Uni-bomber country, but he doesn’t. He lives in Florida in a metropolis best known as a port for Cruise ships. (I’d tell you exactly where that is, but I don’t know for sure that you’re not an internet stalker, do I?)

I’ve tried on quite a few occasions to let David talk to Papa on my cell phone, but that little experiment usually has catastrophic consequences. He either closes the phone, effectively disconnecting the call, or he accidentally texts or calls people that I have been avoiding. Needless to say, it just wasn’t working.

My Dad is a fairly smart guy, so he bought us a webcam and had it delivered right to the house. I was thrilled with this idea because David would get to know his grandparents and actually know what they look like, too. Its much cheaper than plane tickets.

A couple months went by and I still wasn’t able to convince hubby to install the webcam for me. It’s mostly my fault because I really try not to nag, and its really hard to say, “When are you going to install that webcam for me?” without sounding like you are nagging. So I cut him some slack.

Now that it’s been more than 5 months since the webcam has been sitting in the closet, I gave myself permission to install the webcam on the computer by myself. Although Dad reassured me that it would only take 15 minutes to download the software, it actually took an entire hour. The programs kept freezing up and I had to reboot my computer umpteen times. Of course, Dad has explained to me umpteen times that this is exactly why Linux is better than Windows, but I’m a glutton for punishment.

We tried our first webcam video chat last night and it wasn’t great, but it could have been worse. We both had picture, but the video wasn’t moving. We both had audio, but it was really difficult to understand. My Dad sounded like the guy behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.

So, do any of you computer geeks reading my blog know what we’re doing wrong?

Best Buddies

Skywalker is one of David's favorite people on the entire planet. He adores her, probably because she is the coolest big sister anybody could ever have.

She even lets him listen to her Ipod with her. How cool is that?

Big Helper

I made the mistake of trying to pack away David’s baby clothes this weekend while he was awake. I decided it was time to put another round of clothing into storage when I opened a dresser drawer the other day while I was looking for nail clippers and I encountered an entire drawer devoted to baby bibs.

While I was packing up his baby bibs, tiny socks, and unbelievably adorable tiny outfits, he was doing some unpacking of his own.

He tried on his Halloween costume again…

Then he had a fit because I wouldn’t let him play with Mommy’s new Canon Powershot SX10…

Then he demanded to wear a tiny bib and sit in his baby carrier…

No way Mommy’s putting that on her back with you in it, big boy!!

Happy Valentine's Day

A mother holds her children’s hands for a while, their hearts forever.