I always request "no gifts" when we have birthday parties for the boys to limit the piles of wrapping paper trash and duplicate gifts [in fact, the one gift we received from a parent who ignored the request was a Thomas busy book that we have TWO of already!]. I'm not a total Scrooge (even though I might like to be) so we saved the gift-giving for our family birthday celebration.
This is the sight that awaited Jack when we arrived at Grandma and Grandpa's house tonight:
Funnily enough, it was the Wheat Thins that drew more of their attention.
Jack was being really reticent about the whole presents/birthday celebration again, but a giant singing/croaking frog card from my Aunt Jane and Uncle Ken piqued his interest.
Grandma and I both wanted Ryan to feel included, so she got him a book and I found a great alphabet puzzle ($2 at the thrift store - woohoo).
Jack still didn't want anything to do with presents - here he is in his "chipmunk hole".
Finally we lured him into the kitchen for some snacks and then forced him to open presents. He got into the groove pretty quickly! Here's a wooden vehicle bead stringing set I picked up (also $2 at the thrift store!).
While browsing Craigslist a while back, I stumbled onto a listing for a lot of Thomas items - shirts, toys, playsets, etc. I forwarded it to Nancy as a birthday suggestion, since it was a really good price and some things I wouldn't normally buy for him (anything battery operated, for instance!). He was actually really excited about the T-shirts:
Of course he had to identify all the train characters for us!
A fews weeks ago I started to clean out our collection of board books, but when the boys saw the Sandra Boynton books, they insisted we keep them. Later at the library, Jack and I found two new Boynton books we hadn't read,
Tickle Time and
Green Hat, Blue Hat. Jack though they were hysterical, so I suggested to Aunt Sarah that she could get them as birthday presents.
She wasn't able to find
Green Hat, Blue Hat, but found another one we didn't have either -
But Not the Hippopotamus, which is also adorable (Jack is more excited about it that this photo would suggest).
In a shocking turn of events, she also picked up a Thomas sticker activity book.
More Craigslist booty:
A birthday card from a preschool friend:
Finally we decided to take a break from all the unwrapping to eat dinner and have birthday dessert. He was a little more successful blowing out his candles this time.
Then it was on to more presents! Grandma Nancy works for Scholastic Book Fairs, so there's almost always guaranteed to be a nice book (or three) in any gift pile.
Another set of T-shirts and PJs from the Craigslist score.
Ryan realized the frog card croaked the Happy Birthday song, and pointed out that we should have just opened the card instead of singing to Jack.
My last non-Thomas gift was a set of Tegu blocks - little building blocks with magnetics embedded in them. Lots of opportunity for creative play in a compact package.
Finally the grand finale - two Thomas Take N Play sets. We had watched some really
funny video reviews of the Shark Exhibit set on Youtube and the boys thought we needed to run out and buy it for our house, but I was not eager to spend more money on a different size Thomas playset (since our basement is already full of the wooden set).
Enter the Craigslist posting - it contained not only the Shark Exhibit but also the
Dieselworks, and the boys were sufficiently over the moon about having their own sets.
One last surprise gift - Grandpa had restored the old metal Tonka crane that Sam played with as a child. He was able to order replacement parts online and make it like new (except you can't buy new metal toys anywhere...). Ryan was particularly thrilled with it and they couldn't wait to find some dirt to dig in. It will make a nice complement to the Tonka dump trucks we have (though I foresee some sharing issues as there is only one!).
Edited 9/19/13 - Jack's door opened at 5:45 a.m. this morning and instead of crawling into our bed like he does when he wakes up early, I heard little feet padding into the kitchen to play with the Shark Exhibit. I took my sweet time getting out of bed, but the second I appear in the kitchen Jack demanded "the big truck with the digger on it!" As soon as Ryan woke up he headed out into the garden to dig. I guess it was a successful birthday!
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