Shopping a noisy experience

It is going to be a great weekend as I am planning to participate in one of my favorite activities. I get to go shopping for Christmas presents for the young ones on our list. I have found that children usually ask for things that they see advertised on television but those are the same toys that end up at the bottom of the toy box. Therefore I will choose gifts that bear little relation to whatever they have requested.
The toys they actually play with involve imagination. A tablet of paper and a paintbrush will keep them busy far longer than the latest and greatest name brand plaything that costs much more. My daughter buys Halloween costumes after the holiday is over. The kids wear at least one of them almost every day. They put on plays that make sense only to the participants. They become superheros, princesses, witches, and countless other characters.
The best toys serve many purposes. Cheap plastic dinosaurs often terrorize brothers and sisters equally. Trucks can become buried treasure in the sandbox, be sailed down the slide or dropped into a bucket of water to see if they will float.
I always send books. I never met a child who doesn’t like to be read to and parents get tired of reciting the same story every single night. Now that Emma and the bonus grandchildren are learning to decipher the written word I can expand my selection of reading material.
I believe that there are few better things that you can do for your kids than reading to them. The cuddle time is almost as important as the stories that are read.
I will shop for these things by myself as I tend to try out every noisy creation on display. If something says to “push here,” I do. A cacophony of chattering dolls and odd sound effects follows my progress through the store. This often prompts people who shop with me to declare that they don’t know me and have never seen me before. I think they are just jealous that I got to the noisemakers before they did.
I have passed on this tendency to my daughter. She has expanded on it by picking up every candle in any given store and sniffing it, again much to the chagrin of whomever she is with.
I am grateful for grandchildren. My nieces and nephews have gotten to the age where they are hard to buy for. The items they consider toys are way out of our price range. They ask for things that I refuse to buy such as video games. Thanks to years of being pressured to conform and to own exactly what their peers do, anything that requires imagination or individuality is no longer acceptable. Some of them prefer cash, which is an easy gift but not very festive.
I have an early deadline for part of my shopping as at least half of what I will buy will be delivered by that wonderful and beleaguered invention - the post office. Timing is a challenge. I have to send packages early enough to arrive before Christmas but not so early that temptation sets in and presents are secretly unwrapped before the holiday.
There is another problem that I often run into while shopping for toys. On the way to the toy department I tend to find oodles of things I would love for myself but never actually buy. I feel guilty shopping for myself this time of year. Plus, there is always the chance that someone else will buy it for me. I would rather spend my allotted money on trinkets for the little ones.
So if you are out shopping this weekend and the entire toy department erupts in a din of mechanical beeps, boops and assorted disconnected phrases, just ignore the temptation to flee. It might be caused by someone who is shopping for gifts for grandchildren and it might be me.
You will know because my shopping cart will probably contain books, art supplies and few, if any, of the beloved noisemakers.[[In-content Ad]]