Lessons in gifting.

Alternate title: Calvin's Fourth Birthday
Alternate title: Why Spend Money on a Bike When a Free Rubber Snake Will Do?

This is the first year Calvin has been old/interested enough to play with other neighborhood kids. Which is both a good and bad thing (more on that later). But the other kids all have bikes, so we thought his fourth birthday would be the perfect opportunity to purchase the best.gift.ever: a big-kid bike! Who wouldn't love getting a bike for their birthday??

My kid.

Of course.

To be fair, it's not that he didn't love it. I think he does love it...sort of...but he's in this phase where anything he can't do/can't do well frustrates him. And since he's never had a bike before...well, it frustrates him.

Here's the look on his face when he opened his "bike hat."

And when Nate rolled his bike around the corner.

I would describe his reaction to the bike as apprehensive. He liked it, he wanted to do it, but he just wasn't sure. I think his first ride up and down the alley lasted all of five minutes.

And then he asked to go back inside to his snake.

Forget the $$$ bike that Nate spent a couple hours putting together. He preferred the teeny, tiny rubber snake that came inside a bucket of used ocean animals I got for $4 at a consignment sale. (Why was there a rubber snake in a bucket of ocean animals? I don't know! Why was there a DOG in there? Or a hippo? Clearly these people did not invest the same amount of time I did into preparing toys for consignment.)

We told him it was a water snake, because that seemed a kinder, more logical explanation than "some mommies aren't as obsessive/compulsive or as good at organization as your mommy."

Ahem.

I am so happy he had a great birthday and loved his gifts. Even if he loved the ones that erroneously found their way into a stranger's bucket more than those that were lovingly selected and shipped and assembled and hidden away by his parents.

 

 Love my big four year old!