But It’s Christmas

We spent an afternoon at Smyth’s toy superstore yesterday looking for Eve’s Christmas present (you know…so we could pass on the request to Santa Claus of course). It was only meant to be a quick in-and-out job; we’d go in, make our selection and get out of there. By all accounts these places aren’t much fun in the week before Christmas.

Well, as it turned out it wasn’t busy at all, I guess people are far more organised than us or they were put off by the same scare stories we’d heard. Still we were there for what felt like hours…wandering up and down the aisles asking each other, “What about this? Would she be into this?” and avoiding the big pink aisle which held the evil Bratz dolls (seriously…am I the only one who thinks dolls who’ve obviously had a lot of work done isn’t a good idea?).

Eve for her part seemed mildly interested in everything and pottered around playing with each toy at her eye level for about 5 minutes before going onto the next. We’d kind of hoped she would show particular interest in one thing and help us out but it wasn’t to be. In fact the only thing she tried to grab and run out of the doors with was a kiddy-sized shopping trolley belonging to the shop.

The reason we spent so long in there was that I found myself doing something that I did last year, when it was even more ridiculous; I found myself rejecting toys because they weren’t expensive enough or big enough. To be honest Eve is still too young to even know that there is anything different about next Monday and if there were no big presents under the tree she’d not give two hoots. She did really well out of her birthday two months ago, so much so that she’s not had a chance to get around to all of those gifts yet and now she’s about to get a load more. Not because she wants them, or because she’s asked for them but because it’s Christmas and we feel compelled to buy them for her.

I’m not trying to say I would consider not buying her anything at all, I know she’ll love it when she wakes up on Christmas morning and finds her treasures. I just hated my reaction as I walked around the shop putting back toys I know she’d enjoy merely because they only cost a tenner or less. I imagined being asked by people what Eve got from Santa and telling them a bag of plastic animals and being a bit embarrassed. How stupid is that!?

There’s a lot of talk about pester power and how commercials shown during children’s tv shows put a lot of pressure on parents, and I certainly don’t look forward to when Eve is old enough for all of that. But what has surprised me most is the pressure I put on myself to appear to be lavishing expensive toys on her. The phrase I kept hearing in my head was “But it’s Christmas!”

Well, in the end we settled on a gift that cost under €40 and hopefully she’ll like it. It’s got Dora on it so it’s a pretty safe bet and Eve seemed to show a bit more interest in it than in everything else. Still, I’m thinking the toy that’ll win the day will be the packet of plastic pumpkin straws that we found on the Hallowe’en clear-out shelf for her Christmas stocking.