Gifts

Now that Theo is almost 4 1/2, I decided it would be fun to start letting him pick out birthday gifts for people. My Mom's birthday is today, so yesterday I took the boys to the Dollar Tree, gave Theo $4 to put in his pocket, and told him that $4 would allow him to choose one card and three gifts for Grandma Diane. (I'm not really horribly cheap--we bought her better gifts, too! I just wanted to take him someplace where he could choose whatever he wanted, and I wouldn't have to say, "Oh, no--you don't have enough money for that!" Soon enough he can learn about how far money goes at various places, but for now, I wanted someplace where he would be able to choose several small things. Besides, the stuff at the Dollar Tree is so ridiculous sometimes that I thought it would be fun to see what awful things he found!)

Upon getting his $4 and being told that we were going to go pick out presents for Grandma Diane, he announced, "I will put this in my piggy bank!" I laughed and told him the idea was to get something for Grandma, not to save the money for himself. So he thought for a moment and said, "I will let her go to a hotel! Can she stay in a hotel for $4??" Um...not the kind of hotel she'd want to stay in, methinks!! Staying in a hotel is Theo's very favorite treat in the world, so I thought it was cute that he thought Grandma would surely love that, too!

Theo took his task very seriously. He carried a basket around and very carefully examined many items to determine what Grandma Diane would like best. (To my surprise, he actually put each item back after examining it! We don't generally let him touch things in stores, and if it's a store where he can touch things, such as the children's consignment store, we usually have to hound him quite a bit about putting an item back before getting another one off the shelf.)

I was sort of hoping he'd select the giant flyswatter that was nearly as big as him (see what I mean about weird stuff at the Dollar Tree?!), but he merely made two of them into "wings" to show me how he could fly, and then put them back on the rack.

I didn't offer a word of help on this--I wanted to see what he thought Grandma Diane would like, so I just stood back and watched. What did he end up with? A tacky foam pumpkin, a Halloween banner that says "Be Very Afraid!" and has a skull on it, and a Lightning McQueen (from Cars) velvet wall poster that she can color. Oh, and a card with a kitty on it. When he was finished choosing his items, he said very sweetly, "Do they have food here?" I told him they did, and he said, "Can we get Gwamma Diane some food, too?" I agreed that we could spend one more dollar and pick out one food item for her, so he selected a bag of cookies with neon yellow and pink icing, because "Gwamma Diane yuvs cookies!"

Then he dragged his heavy basket up to the register and paid. He was a little disappointed not to get any change back, but overall he was just proud as a peacock of his purchases. And I was proud as a peacock of him!