Boy Toys (not the fun kind)

All the toys for girls are more fun.

Barbie houses with elevators? A printer that works on your nails? A cupcake maker? Who wouldn't want to play with that stuff? I want the new Barbie camper for Christmas and I'm not kidding one bit. It looks fun and I should get stuff to play with too, especially if I'm expected to play.

I know I can buy this stuff regardless of who it is marketed to, but Big Kid is already way cootied out by girl stuff (although I believe he secretly longs to play with these things, and has admitted that it's fun to have girl friends so you can play with their toys) and little kid would play with it but would rather have a vehicle of destruction versus a pink recreational vehicle, so I think we should buy this stuff for me so that we can all enjoy it together.

All 3 of us want the cupcake maker, but it irks Big Kid to no end that the company is called "Girl Gourmet". It burns him every time the commercial comes on. Boys like cupcakes too.

I want to get him a Nintendo DS Lite for Christmas this year and I thought it would be easier to find a deal than it has been so far. They're $30 off at Wal-mart on Black Friday, but is $30 off worth potentially getting trampled to death for in the early hours of the morning? I'm not really thinking so. But $130 is a crazy amount of money for 1 gift for a 6-year-old. Everything little kid wants is inexpensive and easy (mostly GI Joes and Dinosaurs), but stuff Big Kid is into is pricey.

little kid is pretty freaked out to discover that Santa's gift giving is behavior-based. Big Kid told him you get socks and underpants if you're bad, and now every time he's in time-out (so about 17 times a day) he cries, "Santa's only gonna get me socks and pants! I'm gonna make good toices from now on."

I've tried to assure him that so far this year he's probably been good enough to get some Santa gifts, but that he should be a very good boy from now on. Soon after that conversation, he tried to climb to the top of the fridge and knocked down a glass jar of honey, which exploded on the kitchen floor. THAT was a bitch to clean up. If there was a Santa, I'd be very concerned for little kid.

Big Kid is home from school today because he woke up with a slight cough yesterday and seemed warm. Today he was insistent that he was still sick and he needed to stay home so that he didn't cough germs on people, but I haven't heard a whole lot of coughing. Yesterday he was insistent on little kid remaining a certain number of feet from him to avoid infection, and would become near hysterical if that line was crossed. I'm thinking he may have a small cough and a great plan to skip school and keep little kid at bay.

I would like to thank Dora the Explorer for encouraging my kids to yell out "BANANA PANTS" several times as I've attempted to write this post. I'm sure it was super educational for my kids and having a chorus of people scream out "BANANA PANTS" at random intervals makes for ideal writing conditions. Maybe one day a group of moms could get together and scream "BANANA PANTS" at the writers of Dora the Explorer as they go about their day, so they can see just how funny it is.

(Although that really would be pretty funny...)