UGLY!
I had to go out birthday present shopping for The Newbie today. Her birthday is tomorrow; she'll be a single year old. That's a long time in baby years. This is a list of the things she's getting from me and Dave this year:
Three new outfits. Something called a playsuit in a pink and white check pattern with flowers on it; a pair of OshKosh jeans (jeans for babies freak me out, by the way) and a pink t-shirt with bunnies on it; and a pair of pink leggings with pink hearts on them to go with a sparkly pink t-shirt that says something like "It's Easy Being This Cute" or some garbage like that.
Let me tell you two things: First, I hate that clothes for kids are so damned genderfied. There were no gender neutral things for babies. I didn't see a single thing for a girl that wasn't pink or that didn't have flowers or some stereotypical girly garbage on it. I don't like that. Second, I'm disturbed that I had to put more effort into picking out three outfits for a one-year-old child than I have put into buying any piece of my wardrobe for the last three years. Yes, I live in gym clothes. No, I never wear any color but black. That's not the point. The point is that dressing a one-year-old child should require little or no effort--at least on my part. Next time, no clothes as gifts. (The Newbie's mother actually requested clothes when I asked what she wanted.)
Books. I bought a shitload of books for the baby, despite the fact that her mother, my niece, is a lazy reader who I suspect doesn't read to her own child. (Damn, I'm feeling kind of bitter. Probably that's because books were my best friends when I was a child and I fear that The Newbie may grow up without the pleasure of reading because no one reads to her now. Of course, I have no evidence that anyone ever read to me when I was very tiny either, and I still ended up loving books.) Anyway, I bought a big handful of baby Sesame Street character books, a book about a bumblebee, two Eric Carle books, and a book of nursery rhymes with a CD included.
Toys. I bought a baby sized boom box that plays little tunes when you press the buttons. (Always give the birthday girl or boy something that makes annoying sounds. That's my motto when it comes to birthday presents anyway. Drives parents nuts. This one is especially useful in that regard because at least one of the buttons that I pressed made someone in the toy store ask loudly, "What is that? Is that your cell phone? It's not my cell phone. Is that your cell phone? Is someone's cell phone ringing?")
The other toy is a little basketball-type toy with ball-shaped stuffed animals that you can toss through a hoop. That toy was my concession to The Newbie's father who wants her to learn to play sports. It is the one thing that I am in complete agreement with when it comes to her father's ideas. My niece wants The Newbie to do something like be a model, but her father wants her to play basketball. So she'll get at least one sports-related toy from me from now on.
And...
I very much like the toystore where I bought the toys. They're a local business and they focus on educational toys and international toys and they eschew plastic crap made in China and they carry lots of unique stuff. Plus they're super helpful and friendly and they giftwrap for free. Since I like to support all those things, I went ahead and spent more money than was necessary by buying gifts not only for The Newbie but for Dave and for myself as well. Dave got a card game and I got the Ugly Doll that you see in the photo way, way up there. He's actually an Ugly Ghost. I haven't named him yet. Dave suggested that I name him Jesus, pronouncing it as the Spanish do, "Hay-suus." I'm not convinced. I might name him Trinity, because of the whole Holy Ghost thing. I don't know.
I had them wrap up my present to myself and Dave's present, too, and we had a little unwrapping presents time after Dave got home from work and before we went to the gym. Dave was very happy with his card game because it's the same game that he sometimes plays with several other geeks at work on his lunch hour. He was very excited that now he can practice shuffling the cards at home. Anyway, we ended up playing a few rounds of the game before we trundled off to the gym. I lost the first couple of rounds and I was a bit put out because I am a sore loser and I don't even like to play games anyway. But then I won a few rounds and I decided that I liked the game after all. (That will only last until I lose again.)
No comments:
Post a Comment