Christmas doesn’t make me grumpy anymore, the way it did when I was younger. In fact, I’ve grown to really appreciate the family gatherings, the feasts, the music (in small doses), and even the decorations.

But the one thing I just can’t seem to get behind is the exchanging of gifts. Luckily, with the adults in my life, we have come to an understanding regarding this custom. If we exchange any presents at all, they tend to be practical ones, like gift cards. That’s great. Because I don’t have any more room for stuff in my life. I don’t want thoughtful trinkets or funny knick-knacks.  We don’t even have room for any more books on our shelves. It’s a problem.

But now that we have kids, and they’re old enough (2.5 yr-old twins) to be hip to what Christmas is about, the gift-giving is supposed to be a big deal. It’s all magical to see their little faces light up and shit when they open their presents.

And sure, they loved the loot they got for Christmas this time around. Just like they loved the new toys they got the Tuesday before Christmas. Or the Friday before that. They love every one of the nine thousand possessions they’ve accrued in their short lifetimes, each in its own special way. Christmas just increased the number of those possessions to ten thousand. And we didn’t even go overboard compared to a lot of families. It’s just that our little house was already brimming over with kid stuff before Christmas, and now it seriously looks like a Nick Junior version of “Hoarders.” Yeah, we can painstakingly decide which old toys to let go to make room for the new, but they’ll be replaced by others, and before you know it, the deluge of Christmas 2012 will be upon us.

That’s where Judaism comes in. If I tell people we don’t participate in Christmas because we don’t support the orgy of consumerism and we don’t need anything they could possibly give us, then we’re snobby dicks. But if we’re Jews, it’s all good. Other religions would work too, I suppose, but I can relate to a lot of aspects (or at least stereotypes) of what it means to be a Jew. And I don’t want to get hassled at airports.

I’m not going into this lightly. I’ve found a rabbi who does conversions online and everything. It’s supposed to require 80-120 hours of study, but I figure with my knowledge of “Fiddler on the Roof,” I can cut that time in half.

L’Chaim, bitches!

My kids are all about junk.

Worthless junk.

It’s Christmas time here at Casa de la Vodka, and during this most festive, jolly time of year, I’m always filled with a sense of dread. Not because I hate my family (I don’t)(mostly). Not because I don’t have enough money to buy presents. Not because I’m sick to death of opening each tiny Advent calendar door. Not even because I’m reminded every day of my inadequacies at sending Christmas Cards.

No.

I’m full of dread because my children, being the only grandchildren on either side, will be bringing home a metric fuckton of stuff from Christmas.

Honestly, I think it’s sweet. And after I’ve cut their stash in half (neatly donating half to the Salvation Army), they’ll have more fun opening their new toys and playing with them for a half a second before all of those wee pieces go missing. For as much as I come across as an asshole, I love seeing Christmas through their eyes.

But this year, I had a plan. A MASTER Plan, if I may (and I always may). I was going to make a preemptive strike and clean out all of the not-working, half-broken, missing-half-the-pieces toys, throw away what was irreparable and donate the rest to charity. It really seemed like a good idea. A GREAT idea, even.

Until my kids caught me.

“NO! Mom, you CAN’T throw out that half-mangled ball! I LOVE IT!”

“MOMMY! I LOOOOOOOOVE that broken game with the gophers!”

“MAMA, THIS IS MIMI’S TOY.”

I should’ve known not to do it while they were within striking distance. I should’ve known that kids who save old mail and receipts for things bought in 1984 would balk at the idea of getting rid of their precious pieces of shit.

Little do they know, though, that while the kids are away, Mommy will be throwing it all away.

Everything.

So if you don’t see me again, it’s because I’ve been killed by three tiny savages for throwing away their precious collection of broken toys.

I’ve been waiting for the notice from the mega toy stores that one of my favorite toys is coming back but so far Speak & Spell has not returned. Sure, every kid has their own iPad or smartphone now, so why bring back some ginormous, orange eyesore that only does three things?

This isn’t for the kids. This is for YOU. Your kid will figure this shit out using spell check. The most excitement they have to look forward to are the red squiggly lines under a misspelled word.

You need to bring Speak & Spell back into your life because it will unlock an era for you. I’m not just talking about E.T. phoning home, I’m talking about that early geek moment where you held your first electronic device in your hands. A few years later you would feel right at home with computers and personal tape players, but do you remember what that first taste felt like? To have the power to turn a machine on? To type in letters and press enter and get a result? Magic.

Since Texas Instruments, the company that created the Speak & Spell, no longer makes it, I have found three ways that you can reclaim this magic in your life:

1. Buy a “vintage” model on Ebay

Currently there are about 25 up for auction, with starting bids average between $19 and $150.

2. There’s an app for that!

Specifically, there’s an android phone app, an iPhone app, and an app for Macs!

3. Use an emulator

I’ve found two emulators online. This one is instantly satisfying–and there are scans from an old manual in case you forgot how to get going (like, I forgot to press “go” and just sat there looking at it blankly).

Now the only question is, will they bring the 2-XL back? I know it used 8-tracks, but it rocked!

You know what was stupid?  Buying the doll from Tangled.

Rapunzel entered our home a princess with a dream, but has since decided to engage in some sort of multicultural identity crisis evidenced by her nascent attempts to incorporate dreadlocks into her hairstyle repertoire.  Not a good look for her.

Are you there, Ja? It's me Rasta-punzel...

How to Talk Your Daughter’s Doll Out of Making a Fashion Mistake of Cosmic Proportions, or

HOW TO SORT OF DETANGLE A DOLL’S HAIR

You will need:

- A brush that hasn’t been used on human hair and that has plastic or metal tips. No rubber tips.

- Cheap shampoo/conditioner

- A level of commitment that exceeds your child’s.

Step 1: Attempt to convince your daughter that the best part of the movie is actually the end where Rapunzel has a cute little bob and brown hair. Nice try, let’s get on with this, shall we?

Step 2: Wash the doll’s hair with cheap shampoo. Then, work through lots and lots of conditioner.  When rinsing the hair leave some conditioner in.

Step 4: Lay doll next to the window sill (or outside) and let hair dry.  Don’t use a blow dryer… the heat from the dryer will only help the doll realize her recently planned Blond Rastafarian Ambition Tour 2012.

Topless sunbathing? That's *so* eurotrash of you, Rapunzel.

Step 5: Partition dried hair into sections. And brush.  Gently.  Do this for several hours.  OR compromise with Rapunzel and tell her that sporting Bo Derek ‘do circa 1970s is all the rage.  Brush top layers carefully and for the remaining hair, just work through with your fingers.  Then, start braiding.

Top layers brushed. Bottom layers good enough. I should do this with my own hair.

Step 7: WAIT-A-MINUTE.  This isn’t MY doll?!!!  Why the hell am I brushing and combing out this rat’s nest?! Tell child it’s her doll and doesn’t she care what her doll looks like and you already do so much…

Coming to a bookstore near you -- my new parenting book: Shame Works!

Step 9:More braiding.

Bo Derek's Perfect Ten she's not. But... it beats the pre-Rasta look.

Disclosure: The above activity should only be completed while watching a marathon of David Tutera’s My Fair Wedding on the couch and screaming, “I’m working on a post” every time your husband asks you to do pretty much anything.  Man, I love the Internet.

Say cheeeeeeeeese!

I have a small beef with the Vtech people.

My youngest boy, Tom, loves his Mobigo. It’s brilliant for keeping him occupied in the back of the car on long and short journeys. I have no complaints. It is what it is. A hard wearing games console for the under 5’s.

For his birthday this year we decided to opt for another Vtech device – the Kiddizoom video camera. Tom is massively intrigued with his mum’s camera. His play-group also has a Vtech camera and find it a most effective bargaining chip whenever they wish to impress upon Tom a certain mode of behaviour.

We thought quite rightly that the Vtech video camera would be a very successful birthday present.

It was. It is.

But.

In terms of camera functionality it has a huge bugbear. You press the button to take a photo. The camera emits a shutter noise. You think, “great, the photo is taken” and move. But in actuality the picture is not taken until about 3 seconds after the shutter release sound effect. Worse still, after pressing the button to take a picture the screen goes completely black for those 3 seconds.

It has caught me and my wife out every time. It is near impossible to take a decent photo with it. How the hell is a 4 year old supposed to master it? Tom is not stupid. He knows the shutter release sound effect on a normal camera means the picture has been taken at that very moment. Job done. You can move the camera and get onto the next picture.

As a result of this unfathomable time delay we have a nice selection of nose shots, shoulder shots and blurred segments of carpet and wallpaper.

Already Tom has abandoned any pretensions of being the next David Bailey and now uses the games console option on the Vtech camera instead. A facility we’d bought him the Mobigo for.

I realize this is just a kid’s camera. That it is not meant to take award winning pictures. But, Vtech, couldn’t you have improved its response time to user input? How simple can it be to click a button and have it record the image instantly? That 3 second delay might not sound a lot but when posing for a picture it is a lifetime.

And you can times that by 10 for a 4 year old.

It’s a lovely looking gadget. Tom loves playing with it. But in terms of what it is meant to do… it’s a fail.

Say cheese…

…and hold… and hold… don’t move… hold it… hold it…

Dammit, you moved!

You get the picture?

Photo credit.

The problem is that my husband and I are voracious thrift shoppers. We are incapable of saying no to a bargain.

Him: “Check out this wetsuit! Only five dollars!”

Me: “But it doesn’t fit. And you already have a wet suit. And you don’t scuba dive.”

Him: “But it’s only five dollars!”

Me: “Well, okay. And get the fins, too. And what about this waffle iron?”

And as the children are generally with us, this thrift fever has been passed along to them. It’s difficult to deny your child a forty-nine cent fire truck when you yourself have just purchased eighty-seven pairs of boots.Hence, the multiple wetsuits (I’m serious, he has four) hanging in my husband’s closet. And the boots in mine. And the collection of fire trucks that could rival just about any other child’s collection in the continental U.S. (as everyone knows, Hawaiians and Alaskans are notorious fire truck hoarders.) And the piles of Wiggles paraphernalia. (Huh. Who knew that’s how paraphernalia is spelled? Was that R always there?). The Wiggles collection is my four-year old’s, but I sneakily encourage it due to my lurid and enduring fantasies about Anthony, the blue Wiggle.

Then there are the various odd one-offs, like the broken bicycle pump: “You said I could pick one thing, and this is the thing I want!!”

“Wouldn’t you rather have a toy, or at least something that works?”

“No, I don’t want anything else, this is the best thing ever and this is what I waaaaaant!!!!!” (My husband, by the way, not my son.)

So, fearing that we are one broken bicycle pump away from Hoarders: Buried Alive, this week I aimed to seriously de-clutter. For freakin-real this time. I fantasized about a home that’s practically bare, where guests will enter and say “my, how… minimalist.” Eight bags of clothes, three boxes of baby toys, two additional sneaky boxes of toys my kids claim to play with (secreted out in the dead of night), three strollers I didn’t even know we had, and various other oddly shaped and unidentifiable things dropped off at Goodwill later and my house looks…the same.

This is going to be more difficult than I thought.

Photo Credit: By EvelynGiggles

Repeat offender toys get escorted to Goodwill under cover of night, and because I am aware that my children aren’t unique in their ability to break shit I hand them over with the implicit understanding that they will likely be purchased and end up on top of someone else’s refrigerator.  It is with this understanding that I’d like to take a moment to offer my sincere apologies to the families who have inherited my pain.

To the home that acquired the alphabet bus with no volume control, I am deeply sorry.  I’m sure you were just as surprised as I was to learn that it tells shitty knock knock jokes with the simple, incessantly repeated push of a button.  My thoughts and prayers for permanent battery failure are with you in this very difficult time.

Unknowing innocents who now own the remote control jet inhabited by Satan,  please accept my condolences.  To assuage my guilt, I picture you living on hundreds of acres of untouched countryside, perfect for running many safe flights with Air Lucifer.  Surely you understand why we could not keep the toy, given that on its maiden voyage it buzzed two power lines and the neighbors’ beagle before making a gentle descent into the windshield of my car.

Home that probably isn’t a bakery but is now in possession of that 150 piece set of cookie cutters, there are no words.  I know.  I thought it was a really good idea too.  It seemed like a fun way to shape up a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich or do up the playdoughs.  You’ve no doubt learned as I did that when you’re that far outnumbered even the best things have the potential to go bad, and objects that seem innocuously plastic still have the ability to make stunning lacerations on the foot.  I suppose that’s why they call them “cutters”.

Finally, I’d like to offer an apology to the family that took in a certain plush talking Big Bird, designed to say “Peek A Boo” when a child covers its eyes.  By now you know that it’s extremely sensitive to all light and motion, and you probably soiled yourself the first time you turned on a light and heard that pervy sex offender voice say, “Peek A Boo!” from a darkened corner.  We need never speak of these things again.  Should you mention that Big Bird may have accidentally fallen into a landfill, I think we can quietly agree that this is the one time where it’s okay to cut your losses and fuck being green.

As long as my children are children and there are birthdays and holidays and a company called Nerf, this cycle of toy acquisition and expulsion will continue.  If it weren’t for misused toys and gravity, my refrigerator would never stay on the ground.

About the Writer:

Julie soothes the frustration her soul sucking day job dishes out by exploiting her children and making fun of the suburbs on her blog, Freckles and Fickle.  She eats too much Nutella, listens to too much Pink, and knows every line of Empire Records by heart.

Photo Credit

That’s the saying, right?

Confidence that comes from self reliance is not a birthright.  It’s taught.

But.  How do you promote confidence and self reliance in someone else?

Set them up for success… yes, even if they’re only two.  Hey, Alexander the Great died at 32 and had conquered two thirds of the known world by that time.  My two year old only has three decades if he’s going to give Alex a run for his money, so let’s get this party started, people.

Yeah, yeah.  It’s hard to get kids to do stuff. I know. There are steps that can be taken to help kids keep their room semi-orderly, though. Let’s not get crazy and say “clean” or “organized” here because we are talking about children.

Visible: Can they see their toys?  Target, a.k.a my budgetary kryptonite, has bins in hip, trendy fabrics that hold toys — DO NOT BUY THEM.  Go clear.  Clear may not be beautiful, but it will circumvent the mess from three beautiful bins being dumped on the floor in search of a toy that will be played with for five minutes.

Reachable: Can they reach their toys?  Not so they can play with them.  So they can put them away.

Mappable: Do they know where it goes?  If your kids can’t read, take photos, print them out and stick them on the bins so they know what goes where.  Our daughter is learning cursive, so our labels are in cursive.

Do I still have to clean up after my kids?

ABSO-somebody-hit-me-over-the head-with-a-brick-over-and-over-LUTELY.

This isn’t so much about not having to clean up, though.  It’s about kids developing the kind of self esteem that comes from little victories like putting puzzles back where they go or being able to find what they want all by themselves.

And, honestly?

I wouldn’t trade that for all the beautifully patterned Target bins in the world.