So this Christmas I have built magnificent castles out of Duplo, coloured in the entire cast of Frozen, pushed baby dolls around the house in their new pram, shouted “you have to press the button to talk” into Spongebob Walkie Talkies sixteen times, spoken to a horse and Grandad on a toy phone, played the drums and completed three jigsaws…
All by myself.
Not because I enjoy playing with toddler toys on my own, (ok, maybe a bit) but in an attempt to get my young daughters to show an interest in something other than chocolate.
“Who wants to come and play with this all-singing, all-dancing massively annoying Olaf the Snowman?” I say eagerly wiggling the toy in front of the one-year-old.
“Please have more chocolate?” She says.
“How about you?” I ask the three-year-old. “Have you got a warm hug for Olaf?”
“I think he wants chocolate actually mummy. Can I have some chocolate for him?”
Obviously, my children haven’t just been eating sweets all Christmas. They have also had plenty of fun playing with a whole host of other things…none of which were actually presents.
So friends, relatives and Santa Claus – put away those Argos cards because my toddlers have come up with a gift list for next year based on what they really wanted for Christmas…
My Children’s Christmas List 2015
Mummy’s mobile phone.
Daddy’s mobile phone.
Any unattended REAL mobile phone (FYI, If I can’t talk to Sammy the Cat, the Police or Nana – it is NOT a phone).
Hair (preferably freshly pulled from a head).
Crap off the floor.
An endless supply of stuff to unwrap. It doesn’t matter what the ‘stuff’ is. When it comes to presents, it is what’s on the outside that counts. The bigger and brighter the package the better.
Scissors (That actually cut hair and stuff – those plastic Peppa Pig ones? Please…what is the point?).
Glasses (preferably pulled from the face of a person who can’t see to retrieve them).
Baby wipes.
All of the spoons from the kitchen drawer.
Hats (Mummy’s knickers).
Stuff out of a handbag.
Chocolate.
Shoe insoles.
A pyjama party in Mummy’s bed. At 4am.
Wires.
The remote control.
Batteries out of the remote control.
More chocolate.
So, next year the only toys I will be buying are the ones I want to play with. Probably by myself.
What were your favourite…sorry, I mean your children’s favourite presents this year? Feel free to comment below or join me on Facebook or Twitter.
For anyone who has had a sleep-deprived Christmas you may want to check out my Survival Guide. Or, have you accidentally got yourself a hangover? Here’s how to entertain them when you feel rough and this recipe could be the perfect cure!
Ha ha each to their own!
Your pants as hats!! Too funny! Great post – my baby is nearly 10 months, got bought loads and the thing she wanted the most? The bloody wraping paper!
Ha ha, my one year old seemed to love picking the Sellotape off and fiddling with it for ages (ok ten minutes but it’s better than nothing!)..
Haha, I love playing with sellotape, stickers or anything sticky, always have. I’m 30. Its weird, I know.
Kids don’t sugar-coat, do they. If Olaf doesn’t stack up there’s no fake cooing to make the gifter feel good.
I’m seriously considering a policy of stealing a toy a week from about June to September and making that Christmas for next year…
That is actually a brilliant idea. Or I might just wrap up the contents of my kitchen cupboards.
Ooh! Yes. I wonder if they’d be more willing to eat cauliflower if it came tied up in a bow??
Its the same here with a 6 and a 9 year old. Millions of presents. They’ve done nothing but watch the same crap on tv that they watch all year. Meanwhile plenty of gifts from last Christmas have been sittinf under the bed, untouched and juat waiting to be buried under gifts from this year. It’s madness.
Sod it! Next Christmas i am just wrapping up this year’s crap….
That’s what I did! Don’t give away ALL the presents, hoard them in the garage/loft for next year. Especially the ones given to the one year old with ‘suitable from 3 yrs’ written on them. Duh, family.
All my 2 year old wanted for xmas was….the baubles on the tree! Besides all the things listed above hahaha. They such simple creatures when they want to be 🙂
No point in telling her we dont have sweeties or chocolates in the cupboard because then she will scratch out the coins to go buy while looking for the keys to get out the house…
Ha ha!! Oh yes, i gave up on putting the baubles back on the bottom half of my tree!!
Isn’t it ridiculous? And I knew this would happen too. I BEGGED my whole family not to buy anything, and guess what. They bought about 20 gifts each. So my mom’s Christmas tree looked like a big, shiny, colorful spaceship. The only part of the tree you could see was the star. So the kids were basically high for about 5 days, opening one gift after another, not giving a hoot about what was inside. As I write this, I have one watching the TV, the other playing with some old Kinder egg toys, and a pile of toys in the corner of the room.
I’m giving them all away.
(I like the gift you chose for yourself. This is what I really wanted and didn’t get: http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Volkswagen-T1-Camper-Van-10220?fromListing=listing)
Oh my god! Forget the lego fire station – I want one of those bad boys!! To be honest we didn’t buy the kids that much – they had so much from relatives we didn’t need to. I felt bad until after Christmas when I realised
we could have got away with buying them nothing!
I know. I ordered a bunch of things from Amazon and told everyone we’d put their names on them. So now we have 4,000 things from the families, and a whole parcel full of gifts waiting for us at home.
(But seriously, how awesome is that VW camper?!)
I so want one!!!
Haha – little darlings! Our son was alarmingly disinterested in his new bling on Christmas day, but I think he was a bit overwhelmed. However, he is always much more interested in our stuff than his toys anyway (and we are always more excited by his stuff, conversely). Even this morning at a children’s centre, surrounded by cool toys and play stuff, he pulled my purse out and happily sat emptying it and throwing pennies for 10 minutes. Obviously, I let him just get on with it as whatever keeps him amused…
Oh a full wallet of coins – my one year old’s favourite. I won’t tell you how many times she has lost my bank card when I have let her play with it in exchange for five minutes peace…
Oh yes I lost my credit card for 2 weeks after he had a particularly enthusiastic play date with my purse. It turned up under the hall rug when I eventually got round to hoovering!