Muff's Modules & More

[boramx]

my mom brings my son, a 1 year old, a new stuffed animal more or less each time she sees him, which is pretty f*cking often, like twice a week. at this point his room looks like a mix of the movie labyrinth and a hindu temple

or you could say it looks like an aftermath photo of jonestown, but the humans replaced with the cast of fraggle rock.

last weekend she gave him a new kangaroo, which he already has several, and she had the nerve to say to me, "well this one isn't very nice, but here it is anyway".

i won't bore you nor lay myself on the austrian couch before this forum and spill my guts about why i don't try to stop my obsessive mother's actions, but needless to say it went through my mind that when you reach the point that it occurs to you that the elusive quality that goes into a stuffed animal that makes one "better" than another may, should you possess the ability to discern it, be a good deciding factor in determining if one should spend money on it or not.

so, lots of you guys/gals have kids, right? it involves piles of stuff, doesn't it?

[ignatius]

i have no kids... but i do have 11 nieces and nephews.

tell her to bring diapers instead.

i'd load up the majority of those stuffed animals into a trash bag and drop them at the local kid shelter or free daycare or whatever.

[boramx]

i don't have u-haul fees atm.

[regenbot]

This is a common problem, you just have to give away most of them. It's nice if the toys still stay in his room. My daughter tends to spread all her stuff eavenly across our apartment.

[Junk Rhythm]

or construct pants like Flea did years ago:

[bartlebooth]

it is pretty common, especially if your son is her first grandchild (by the time of their seventh grandchild my folks had trouble recalling my middle son's name).

The one thing i'd say is that your son is only 1 so for now these stuffed animals are just soft but lifeless things he may or may not want to hold onto for a bit. but in a few years they are going to become 'guys', invested with personality, actors in many games and dramas often having nothing to do whatsoever with their genetic species (certainly not with their 'buiild quality'). then its fun to have a bunch of them around as your son will build and populate entire worlds with them. so i'd advise to keep a few more then you think he 'needs' as there always is in fact a need for extras and bad guys in the dramas that will play out.

oh yeah, its better to get used to piles of stuff (actually piles is not so bad, in a few years it will just be 'stuff' strewn around all your rooms).

[consumed]

lol

its unfortunate, but when my mom buys one of our kids stuff we absolutely cannot stand (clothes, toys or whatever), we give it away to charity and never mention it. i figure its making someone else out there happy.

a stuffed animal is far easier to tolerate than annoying plastic sound toys that your kid WONT STOP PUSHING THE FUCKING BUTTON over and over and over and...

[lizlarsen]

I have 3 kids and I hate Christmas and birthdays. Growing up, my family -- we got one big present for these events. It was usually practical or something that got used a lot (like a game or a construction set.) But my mother and father-in-law by as MUCH cheap crap as they possibly can. Just so they have as many things for the kids to open as possible.

I have to drive a vanful of old toys to Goodwill multiple times a year and my house is full of broken, cheap crap. It's terrifying.

[pskept]

my wife and i deal with the same stuff and our son only wants to play with things that aren't toys. ya know the typical situation where he likes the box the toy came in more than the toy. our plan is to give stuff to charity before each christmas and b-day. i dig what bartlebooth is saying though.

[SMS303]

héhé ... my niece born 25th july last year.
about a half hour ago i bought a stuffed animal which will laugh when you hit it plus 7 Sesamestreet easy learning books

last november i bought a huge stuffed Minnie Mouse (96cm), Goofy + Donald Duck + Minnie Mouse (35-40cm each) and several small Mickey Mouse in different outfits (as farmer, haloween, new year, eastern bunny etc)

[lizlarsen]

My problem is with furniture... no place to put all this stuff! I wish that just one year, all the toys would come with some toy bins and organizers.

[morphic]

My outlaws buy the kids too much crap at xmas , as they are devorced its like a battle between them who can get the most shite ! We have 3 girls i live in a pink nightmare !!!
Rant over

[splitpoint]

So it's not just me? My mother used to do the stuffed animal thing every time she sees the kids as well. I finally had to pull her aside, she was hurt but it had to be done.

[emdot_ambient]

No kids (and won't ever have any unless some girl younger than me and my wife pays for the surgery to extract my little soldiers to get her w/child...and my wife approves...all of which is to say AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN)

**ahem**

Where was I? Oh, yes....But I do have a niece and nephew. When my nephew was young I used to go down and visit around his birthday every year and I'd bring him some Star Wars toys or something. He already had so much crap that none of it meant anything to him. It was all just more meaningless stuff. When I realized that, I stopped buying anything. What's the point? After you have so much stuff, there's no point to more.

I'd bet if you made some of the ones that never get played with just go away...take them in your car and dispose of them at a charity drop off or something...the kid would never even realize they had gone.

Even if they did, I hear something like this: "Daddy, where did Mr. Biggles and Jingle Rabbit go? I can't find them." "Oh, didn't I tell you? They told me our house was too crowded so they went to go live with a nice family that didn't have any toys. They'll be ever so much happier there, don't you think?"

[emdot_ambient]

[SMS303]

Good point.... maybe she'll learn: hit and they will laugh
Me hope she won't learn that. But she has allready some character. I had her on my arm and she couldn't reach for a blanket behind me on the couch. So she did get angry and went growling like uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

She wants to sit but she can't get sit up by herself. If i lay her on her back she gives a very angry face. Which dissapears when you hold your fingers in front of her so she can pull up by her arms

[fac]

Tell me about it. My mom doesn't have much money and she rarely buys her grandchildren stuff, but my mother in law.... jeez.

Sometimes, we're all in the mall or something and my daughter sees something she likes... candy, toys, balloons, whatever. My wife and I sometimes buy her stuff, and sometimes we just say not now and that's the end of it. But if grandma is around, my daughter will throw a nasty fit full of crocodile tears if we dare tell her no. And grandma's best line is "here, I'll give you some money to buy it"... as if money was the damn problem.

[fac]

[whitewulfe]

[causticlogic]

No kids here either. My wife and I tend to get our niece and nephew practical things (much to their confusion). I figure then we won't incur the wrath of revenge-gifts should we ever have kids. Plus, it's stuff they can actually use - not just things that might be touched a couple times, then tossed to the side.