doesn’t it take a long time to list stuff on Ebay? Still, 17 items listed, for 5p a piece. And like I said, many more to come…found a whole box full of early reader/ piccie book type ones that I hadn’t realised was kicked about. Will try to put a list together in case anyone is interested in them without going through that well known auction house 😉
And the week seems to have passed in a bit of a blur. Today for example was odd. Didn’t get away from the house until lunch time, as someone inconsiderately drove into the central reservation, destroying the barrier and blocking the M1 for some hours. When I did go up to work, it took less than an hour to get there, so how come it took nearly 90 minutes to get home?
I got here pretty much at the same time as everyone else. Grandma had taken them both to ballet and was just getting them out of the car, Tim had been in nearly long enough to heat the oven to pizza temperature. Big has decided she would like to stop ballet, as she doesn’t want to be in the show (it’s a really big deal, think I may have blogged about it before) and all the lessons right now are focussed on the show performance, so she doesn’t really get to join in properly. I’m not very impressed by this 🙁 And I’m sure that losing a ballet shoe (which mother has only just bought her, sigh) didn’t have a contributing effect on this decision at all 😕
Then mother went and brought in two bags full of birthday presents. This didn’t turn out to be a good idea, really the children were too tired to deal, and I hadn’t had time to brief Small about birthdays. So he got to watch all the presents come out of the bag and be given to Big, and then he went and looked in the carrier bag. Nothing left. He climbed on to the sofa and put his head down.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Ebby’ he said, with bottom lip quivering, then put his arms up and collapsed in a sobbing heap.
‘Empty’, I realised. He’d worked out there was nothing for him.
I’m a bit cross about this, but mainly with myself. If I’d handled it better, he would have been ever so happy for Big, he’s a lovely generous child and loves to give ppl presents himself. But we’re only two weeks past christmas, and at christmas, every time there was a present for one, there was a present for the other. Really not fair to expect a not nearly 3 year old to understand that one, was it?
Ah well. I’ll have to prepare him well for the weekend. I am considering starting a family tradition where the birthday child gives their sibling a present, but I don’t know whether that’s just over the top. It’s just that I remembered a christmas present I had for him that didn’t make the trip to Felixstowe, so is presumably in a cupboard somewhere. I’d be grateful for ppl’s thoughts on this in the usual place.
Oh, and I have a contender for blogring uniform of the year 😉 Last year it was the pink skirt, as demonstrated on Merry’s blog the other day. This year, Big has just been given for her birthday a Tesco floor length denim skirt that I can see being a real favourite 😀 Any other takers? I also found a thing to get vouchers on their site, hope this helps someone.
Right, although I’m not driving tomorrow, I am working. Ever onwards!
Ooh, almost forgot, started working on a favourite books for children page earlier today, but didn’t get very far. I like it so far though 😉
Comments
15 responses to “phew”
I’m going to start that tradition too for the same reasons. My girls’ birthday is coming up and I feel it will be very hard for B to understand why 2 out of the 3 get pressies, especially as you say, so soon after christmas. Sod what anyone else thinks, life is tough when you’re 2, if we can make it easier then we should, hard knocks can come when they’re old enough to cope better 😉
Spookily have just been looking for long denim skirts for my two, it’s the only *girly* item of clothing they have requested in years, so I’m off to look at that now, thanks 😀
Glad to hear someone is with me, and nice to hear from you Tech – hope you find Tesco skirts for your two!
Yes, I like the idea of giving presents on your birthday too. I believe this is normal in some cultures. I seem to remember at Kindergarten Joy handing out small gifts (0f a wrapped homemade biscuit) to her friends and really feeling special. And I’m sure I usually get something for the others when one of them has a birthday, as well as getting them involved in making and giving birthday cards/surprises. (I have learnt the hard way too! with tantrums, the lot!)It seems that even 5 and 8 year olds find it hard not to be the birthday person!
…O, no, what have I said.. It’s my birthday soon!
damn! I forgot to do my ebay listing – grrrr!
Anna has a long denim skirt, but it was from the Gap Sale, one of her bargains at only £2.99!
I have so much to ebay, but couldn’t do it for last night. Oh well.
We have so many birthdays here that it seems to be less of an issue now but certainly we have done that at times, more at crucial ages than anything else. So while i would except Amelie to manage now, i daresay Josie might get a token at 2. Still, here at least, 3/4 won’t be getting and that does alter things. I know when Fran was 6, Maddy and Amelie got a little token something.
we’ve never done presents for siblings. To me, a birthday is about that person and it’s always been remarkably successful (for my 2 anyway!!) to keep it that way. It might help that we tend to (try to) do something as a family on their birthdays too so they have something exciting to look forward to too.
We were toying with that at Pip’s last birthday (end of November so Titch was 2 and 3/4)and decided to try explaining and warning her about it. She was fine, totally, didn’t even once worry about it and joined in all the excitment with good grace. Pip let her play with her presents and I was glad we hadn’t gone down that route because it might be a bit mean but it’s a gentle lesson in not always being the centre of the universe. Had I suspected that she would find it hard I would have given her a token something, can’t really see the point in hard lessons! If you think Small could cope with it with a little preparation, why not let him.
Titch would find someone just arriving with a bag of pressies for Pip really rough too and would be likely to yell “where’s mine?” rather than just empty!
I think the problem was very much the unexpectedness of it – it’s not Big’s birthday until Monday, so I wasn’t expecting mother to turn up with pressies last night, but given the hectic weekend we have planned I suppose I should have. Big was very good with Small, I just wish I could have spotted that disappointment before it occurred – strikes me that that was a hard lesson 🙁
He won’t be there for most of it on Sunday, as I’m taking Big out for her treat, but he’ll be at school on Tues when they are doing a montessori thing. Presumably that doesn’t involve presents though, so won’t have the same issue. I will have to have a little think about how to talk to him about it.
I nearly cried when he was crying, he was ever so upset, and it wasn’t in a greedy way, iykwim, it was just that he was left out. He’d have been perfectly happy with just a tiny something wrapped up as that was how he’d come to understand presents worked. If christmas hadn’t been quite so mad, he wouldn’t have had that understanding anyway!
We have done ‘token’ presents when they were very small, but now we do a family thing (meal or outing).
We don’t do anything like that for birthdays – hey, we never did when I was little and I’m ok 😉 – but I guess as Merry said, there are a lot more of them not getting anything, which must help!
But I can totally understand how Small felt, and I would have been as gutted as you were – I know there have been times when stepMIL has turned up here with clothes for P&M and nothing for E and he’s been *really* disappointed.
We always do pressies on their birthdays to the others!
It’s the law!
It started when the actual BIRTHday happened,and which ever new baby would give a gift to it’s new sibling/s,and it just stuck really!
I am sure that it isn’t really must do,but for us it has become part of our year of celebrating getting older,good for the birthday child to give……….
We always had presents on each others birthdays when I was small. I suspect it started for a similar reason as my birthday is so soon after Christmas I would have imagined my (younger) brother would have struggled as to why I was getting more gifts just 12 days after the frenzy but he wasn’t. It also worked well the other way cos I was always sad when my birthday was over that there would be no more pressies until Christmas which was a whole year away. So having at least one pressie to look forward to in May (bro’s birthday) was nice.
We do it here for the same sort of reason really – it is really hard for a small child to accept all the attention being lavished on the other sibling. Also having had it done to us when we were children it never really struck me to question it really 😉 I guess if we had more than two it might well have become a tradition we dropped though..
When we were little my sister and I got a small token pressie on each others birthdays. I expect we’ll do that here, but I hadn’t given it alot of thought yet cos L’s still oblivious. You would have hoped Small’s grandma would have been a bit more thoughtful/compassionate. Hope she felt a prick of conscience for making him collapse in tears. And happy birthday to Big for Monday.
She didn’t, she said that’s the way it goes and in May it will all revolve around him. Tried to offer him a funsize milkybar, but he saw through that one in flash. Hohum.
Ours each get a small ‘un-birthday’ present on the other’s birthday. No, we didn’t when I was a kid as there were four of us and not much money. But if I go down that route I end up sounding like someone from that monty python sketch about how tough we had it in my young day…
Happy birthday to Big for Monday!