Not to be confused with Flowers in the Attic, everyone's favorite gothic-soft-porn-incest-child-abuse literary opus, or the rockin' Aerosmith album. I'm talking about our own attic, and the box of toys we now have stored in it, labeled "Future Gifts for Elsa & Clio."
Over the past year, starting when the girls were born, through Christmas and their recent first birthday, friends and family have given the girls tons of wonderful gifts, for which we are incredibly grateful. We've had to buy next to nothing when it comes to clothes, books, and toys. I don't think the girls have an obscenely excessive amount of stuff (although if you saw the primary-colored plastic explosion that is our living room on an average afternoon, you might beg to differ), but I do thing they've got plenty. And they're still in a stage where they're almost as entertained by a piece of tupperware or the TV remote as they are by a stuffed bear or a plastic Fisher Price....whatever. They're also not yet really aware of things as being "gifts" or "theirs."
So, a few times, when we've gotten gifts that they already have a lot of (stuffed animals, for example) or that they're a little too young to appreciate (coloring books, baby dolls, more advanced puzzles) we've squirreled them away into the aforementioned box, to be presented on future occasions. (And by then we will have forgotten who they are from, and can take credit for them. Heh heh.)
I realize that some people may think this is cruel or stingy or just plain kooky of us. Take the baby dolls, for example: a neighbor of ours who came to the girls' birthday party gave them each a very sweet little baby doll. Great gift, and when the girls unwrapped them, they were obviously interested, and started poking at the babies' eyes (A recent new favorite obsession of their: eyes). It was very cute, and prompted kind-hearted souls like my mother to plead with us to take the dolls out of the boxes. But the thing is, Elsa and Clio were just as interested in the cardboard boxes containing the dolls as they were the dolls themselves. Alastair and I think that it will be much more fun for them to get their baby dolls when they are a little older, and perhaps more emotionally prepared for the responsibility of caring for infants. Er, I mean, when they'll get, on some level, that these are little pretend babies for them to hold and kiss and take care of. Not just hunks of plastic that happen to have those "eye" things and --- oooh! Cardboard!
So, now the baby dolls live in the attic, forgotten and forlorn, and at night they come alive and say creepy things in little baby doll voices while a broken music box, somewhere, tinkles out a dischordant tune. Bwah ha ha.
Is it wrong of us to ration gifts in this way? Obviously, in the future we won't be able to simply pull presents out from under the girls' noses without their noticing. And I don't want to be somebody who makes "no gifts" rules, because I believe that giving gifts is as much a pleasure for the giver as it is for the recipient. At the same time, I don't want Elsa and Clio to grow up expecting -- and therefore feeling entitled to -- tons and tons of stuff. Gifts are better appreciated, I think, when they're fewer and farther between. Then, I've always been sort of a romantic when it comes to the appeal of scarcity -- something only someone who has grown up in the midst of insane plenty can be. I remember reading Little House in the Big Woods as a kid and thinking there was something wonderful about how Laura Ingalls was thrilled beyond belief to receive for Christmas just a rag doll, a stick of peppermint, a candy heart, and an orange. An orange! Such an exotic treat! I guess I'm hoping that when we bring those baby dolls down from the attic, they'll seem a little more like that: something rare and special and unexpected.
While I'm on the subject of gifts, I should mention that for the girls' birthday, three fabulous people responded to my recent complaints about clothes that say annoying, stereotyping things like "diva" and "princess," with some excellent, non-spoiled-brat-messaged apparel. The girls' fab nanny, Jean, went so far as to have t-shirts custom made that say "Wicked Smart" (Clio) and "Future CEO" (Elsa). Now all they need are some onesies that say "Mommy steals my presents and hides them in the attic in an attempt to make me less materialistic" and they'll be all set.
