January 14, 2005 - Friday
Since we'll go to Rip's house tomorrow to celebrate his birthday, I took the boys to the store today to find Rip a gift. I pretty much expected what I was getting myself into taking the boys to a toys store to buy a present for someone else, but not entirely. On the way there the boys both suggested we get Rip a Bionicle, but citing that Rip already had Bionicles I said maybe the Battling Tops game that Harry had learned how to play might be a good idea, too. That idea seemed OK with Harry, so I took them to Target hoping to find it and avoid the Bionicles altogether (for some reason I kind of thought that Target didn't have them). Unfortunately, it went the other way at Target. There was no Battling Tops and the boys found the Bioncicles aisle.

In terms of finding a gift Harry seemed to be pretty confident about which Bionicles Rip already had, so that part was pretty straightforward. The other part was, of course, that Harry and Jeremy like Bionicles, too. I was ready for that part of it, too, especially since I'd taken the boys Christmas shopping and had gone through the whole idea of buying presents for others and the whole (wonderful) thing with Harry and the poinsettias. Still, the boys were extremely earnest about getting one for themselves and had me fighting my own resolve.

"Today we're shopping for a present for Rip because we're going to a party for his birthday tomorrow," I said, using the same phrase from Christmas. The difference is that at Christmas there is the clear expectation that Harry and Jeremy would also get presents and everything would kind of work out in the end. This time there was no Christmas looming, no birthday looming, and no possibility for things coming out even. Ah, methinks, it's an opportunity to start talking about money and start getting the boys to think about making buying decisions. I tried to talk about the $2 bill each had received from my Aunt Vij for Christmas (a gift for which neither had much appreciationfor amid the toys on had that day). Harry didn't completely seem to understand the idea of his own money, nor particularly about the denominations of money (I didn't really expect he would), but he did work hard to set the schedule for coming back with his money to buy his own Bionicle. Ultimately, acknowledging that we would "soon" come back was the way out of it; well, that and letting them ride on the silly 50-cent hot dog truck and train in the mall.


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