Christmas Gifts

I was having a hard time with gifts for my boys this year.  They are 3 and 1 and just had birthdays so our house is still full of "new" toys.  Also, my oldest isn't really a toy kid.  He loves to play with tools and scrap pieces of wood and build with blocks of which we have tons already!  My youngest has all of his older brother's toys and is still a little young to play with toys.  He does like trucks and cars and trains, but our house is totally overrun with them already.

So, I was obviously in a rut.  I started asking some friends and received great ideas.  My husband also reminded me how much our kids love to be outside and that anything for outside made sense to him.

After consideration here are some of the things our boys are getting:
1. Sleds!!!  We have an infant sled, but now that I have a three year old, a real sled is needed!  Just remember, please put helmets on your kids when they go sledding just like you would if they were skiing or riding a bike.  Helmets are super warm, the kid can't rip them off, and they are a huge safety plus especially if you have a little boy who has already gone over the side of the driveway in a Cozy Coupe and got stitches like I do.





2. Anything to keep them quiet in the car during our long ride to Vermont for a family ski trip.  I got Sammy a lap desk for the car so that he could play with little toys and also color in addition to watching movies. And while Tommy might be a bit young to sit and watch TV, I'll do just about anything to keep him happy on a long trip so we have a dual screen DVD player.  I'm hoping he will actually watch and fall asleep to the Lion King, sleeping blissfully for several hours (that will never happen). 

3. Educational toys. I also wanted a few easy, non-mommy involved educational toys for Sammy.  He is learning so much at preschool and really does like to do a lot of this type of thing independently.  We have had flash cards in the past but they always ended up all over the place and not really serving their purpose.  Then I saw these on Amazon that came on a ring so you couldn't loose one.  I can already picture him flipping through these by himself and talking to each card. The best part is that you can either buy them through Amazon or buy cheaper cards yourself and put them on ring of your own.


4. Our biggest purchase this Christmas will be a Kindle Fire.  It would be redundant if I repeated why we are buying this expensive product for our 3 year old, so I will just send you over to Mommy Breakdown for the comparison of tablets for young ones.  Lauren has a done a great job breaking it down both by cost and by function.

Good luck shopping. Try not to go crazy.  Make lists and try to really think about what people want, need and will use -- all hard things to figure out!