I’m extra stressed about flu this year. I read about the strains in the flu shot not being the right ones this time, and I thought, “Well…it’s okay. I mean, the flu is pretty awful but usually survivable unless, like, you have a compromised immune system.” Which is when I remembered that a compromised immune system is what Edward has now. Which is when I smacked my hands together briskly and remembered there is no point getting upset about things that COULD happen but HAVE NOT. Then I went on Facebook and saw most of my local friends have one illness or another going through their families, so then I sealed up the doors with deadbolts and duct tape and no one is going back to school or work.

Let’s talk about what Edward got for Christmas. He had one million ideas, which was good, but he kept changing them, and there were a lot of things I didn’t think he’d actually want/like, and also a lot of them were not sensible: for example, a video game so old it could only be bought used, and for over $100. So…no. One game he wanted had the worst reviews I’d ever seen for a game, but at least it was cheap ($12):

(image from Amazon.com)

Paul says Spore is in fact famously bad, a game that had huge build-up and no follow-through, and also is glitchy and incompatible with a lot of computers, and the company has abandoned it and no longer fixes things or does updates. So I was not going to buy this game, and I told Edward all about the problems and complaints, in the hopes that he would not want it anymore. But then about a week before Christmas, Edward said there were three things he wanted most for Christmas—and one of them was Spore. Well, FINE. We did indeed have a very hard time getting it to even run on my computer, and my dad had to bring over two different external disc drives before we could find a combination that didn’t spit out the disc. And it is indeed a very glitchy game, and luckily Edward has a bunch of other stuff to play with so he doesn’t play it often.

(image from Amazon.com)

Garfield Fat Cat 3-pack Volume 3. I like to get a fun book for each kid, and my favorite is if I can find books that several/all of the kids will want to read, so they can pass them around and I feel like I got double or triple or quintuple value out of it. We have a couple of Garfield books that Rob bought with a gift card back when he was about 9, and they are TATTERED with re-reading, so I got another one to add to the rotation.

(image from Amazon.com)

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare. Edward had a lot of video games on his list, and this was one of the most available and reasonably-priced ones ($22); also, Paul wanted to play it.

(image from landsend.com)

It’s out of stock in his size now, but I got him this Lands’ End space-themed shirt. I also got him the midnight navy solar system one, which is now out of stock for boys but still in stock for girls (I wanted Elizabeth to want it, but she didn’t). I’d told the kids about that little want/need/wear/read gift-buying poem, and they were intrigued, and I liked the way it took some of the pressure off to make every gift a Big Wow Exciting one. So although I didn’t follow that poem, I did use it to prepare them to expect at least one clothing gift, which ended up being fun all around. I think knowing they would get one clothing gift made it a fun thing—like, Henry immediately got very excited about the idea of getting a red and black shirt if only such a marvelous combination existed, and Elizabeth said she really wanted a new sweater, and so forth. I think if there hadn’t been the concept of a Clothing Gift slot to fill, they wouldn’t have been excited about the clothes.

(image from Amazon.com)

An MP3 player is another of the three things Edward said he MOST wanted for Christmas—and coincidentally, was another of the things I wasn’t going to get him until he said that. I thought he was too young for it and wouldn’t use it, and that he’d lose it and/or put it through the laundry. And I might be right, but so far he really likes it. I suspected he wouldn’t like the earbud things that came with it, so I also bought him these headphones, which went on a lightning deal for something like $7 shortly before Christmas. I might get him a songs gift card for his birthday; in the meantime he has a few of my songs and a TON of Rob’s. (My music is apparently derpy. Rob’s is awesome.)

(image from Amazon.com)

Edward has wanted a Minecraft Papercraft set for ages, but I thought he’d find it frustrating. I was completely wrong: my brother and sister-in-law bought the deluxe set for him for Christmas, and he spent the next few days carefully and patiently putting it together. Quietly. All by himself. It was delightful. Also, the pieces were a LOT bigger and nicer than I’d expected. For some reason I was imagining they’d be cubes about an inch on each side, and that’s true of the blocks that make up the characters; but the wood/stone/ground blocks are more like 2.5 inches each side. The tree at its widest point is over 7 inches.

(image from Amazon.com)

Our library has a puppet theater and puppets, and Edward loves them, particularly this hedgehog one. He asked the librarian where they’d gotten it, and she said from a library-supplies catalog. I looked online to see if by any chance I could find it, and hooray, Amazon had it. My parents bought it for him for Christmas, along with the mini owl (which today is showing as over $35 but was not at the time—all the puppets were in the $7-14 range, I think), the little cat, the bee, and the emperor penguin.