Can you give your children too many presents?

In a previous post, I referred to parents as suckers. It seems that each time my husband comes home after having been out with the girls, they are carrying a new something or other that he ‘couldn’t resist getting for them’.

Each night when we tidy up the house after the girls have gone to bed, we mention to each other that they have too much ‘stuff’.

This is what their room looks like on any give day (honest blogging at its best!) and then they actually have a toy room with one of their doll houses, their toy box and other miscellaneous stuff.

Then there is the zoo.

It sits behind their door and is over a metre high and half a metre wide. It contains all of their regular sized stuffed toys. The giant ones are strewn all over the floor. The toys in the zoo very rarely get played with, and over half have been made by me.

But then Bel started kindy and brought home every germ that she came in contact with. I feel like we have had snotty noses and barking coughs forever. Then Hubby had another lot of surgery on his shoulder and I had other health issues.

Willow was waking up every night multiple times and then up for the day at 5am, Bel was back sleeping in our bed and we were all tired, cranky and snotty.

But then we got through it. Hubby gets to go back to work this week, the girls have more energy and are playing beautifully and the world looks wonderful again. So to celebrate, I made them a toy each. Sucker.

While she was sick, the only way to let Hubby and Bel sleep was to take Willow outside. She loves the moon (mook) and the stars. So she would lie in my lap as I sat in the gutter, looking up. Occasionally she would even drop back to sleep for a little while. So I made her a moon with a star that she could keep in her room.

Bel, on the other hand, is obsessed with her snails. She was given 4 for her birthday and we have had 3 successful clutches of eggs. I shudder to think how many babies are actually in the tank. She has even named some of them: Rainbow Dash, Doink, Doink doink, Bambi and Bambi’s Mummy.

Her toy was a lot of fun to make. I had intended to make it out of realistic colours and call it Gavin, but she is nosey and discovered what I was up to and requested that I “make it pretty”. So, I did and she called it Bundy (after her nickname inutero).

Bundy can retreat into her shell, or emerge to greet the world and I had a lot of fun designing it.

Willow has already deserted Mook on a chair and Bundy is currently in a bag already in the toy box and sometimes I wonder why I bother. But then I get another idea and can't help myself!

So when do you give your children presents and do you think they can have too many?