all photos thanks to AmberPerrodin.com

Case in point: My wife comes home yesterday, excited about a secret. She couldn’t hold it in, so she had to reveal to me that someone was planning a wonderful gift for me, later this week or next. This would make most people very excited. But for me it is the beginning of a downward spiral—Let me explain.

First thing that happens when she makes the revelation, a) excitement, oh there is something for me. What could it be? b) No really, what could it be! After berating her for a while, she closes up & doesn’t offer any more help. This is the point where my thoughts spiral upwards, towards the heavens of possibilities.  This quickly manifests into a ridiculous beast, i.e., new car, cabin in Colorado, book deal, imac, touring with U2…well you get the idea.

The real problem comes when I actually have to come to the reality of the gift. What do you do when you open up the box and it is just a shirt, a nice shirt but a shirt nonetheless. This is the moment when the giver expects the magic to happen, the twinkle in the eye, the joyous exclamation of thanks, but usually all I can muster is a half fake smile and a thanks; while inside I am resenting the gift and the giver for not being the Ferrari that I obviously deserve.

I write this simply to show my depravity as a human being. And when I say the anticipation is killing me, mark my word, I’m speaking the literal truth.

painted by Jennie A. Brownscombe

Today begins the month of November.

It is a rather awkward month in some particularly peculiar ways. Let me give you a few examples.

I am very much a proponent of not getting ready for one holiday before all other major holidays leading up to it are celebrated. I mean if we are going to take Thanksgiving Day seriously, then lets not treat it like the poor step child of Christmas. Go into the major retailers and you will see Christmas paraphernalia of various sorts already being displayed. I try to keep all my family’s excitement over Christmas at bay until December 1st, but I’m lucky to even get to mid-November. This year has been particularly bad, both wife & daughter began talks as early as August or September—that’s just craziness.

So poor November.

Why does it become awkward? Well because you feel the tension of saving one’s love for others until December. For an example, say I want to give a small gift to my wife or child to show my love or gratitude. Well if I do it now, yeah they will love me, but then I set them & myself up for disappointment next month. If it’s really good then I have to top it at Christmas. If I don’t then I just look like I half-aced it.

So here is the tension, I love you but I have to regulate my love quotient to a certain bare minimum—so how about just a hug and a smile? Christmas cards are coming soon, I should save the stamp; so I can’t even sending you a card!

This one is for you November.

Continuing my series of posts on living simply, I will explore a difficult topic: your children’s toys.

It has seemed as if one of the hardest things to simplify in my family’s life has been the quantity & quality of our children’s toys. I have two young girls and they seem to be constantly getting things from everywhere:

• family {grandmothers}
• friends
• holidays
• activities {school, church, b-day parties, etc.)

It seems that between the above sources, as well as random other ones my kids are always bringing something home, usually of the plastic & cheap variety. First off this simply creates an environment where they expect to receive something from everyone & everything they do. Whoever decided to start giving out presents to the kids that show up to someone else’s party should be punished. Just because you have a bunch of snotty selfish kids show up, you shouldn’t feel compelled to feed the fire anymore.

Secondly, and more to the point of where this is going, it causes our house to be filled with all kids of rubbish. The problem I’ve encountered, when dealing with women in general they are overly sentimental over the junk they receive. “Aunt Suzie-Jane, may she rest in peace, gave that to me. I can’t just get rid of it…,” is usually what I hear.

The unseen problem is that when this collection of toys (which they play with once and forget about) creates a large amount of clutter in the child’s room, to the point where they don’t want to even play in the room because of the chaos. Regularly I have been going into my older daughter’s room (she’s still young enough for this to work) and just simply clean house. I go through her shelves and trash on junk that has accumulated. I leave the quality toys and take the old things to the local resale shop.

I don’t tell her exactly what I did or the things I got rid of but simply that I cleaned her room. She loves me for it. It becomes a new place of imagination for her again. Taking the clutter away gives her a new opportunity to create and explore.

With our younger daughter, she doesn’t have a room to herself, she shares one with us. Her toys are placed in a central place in the living room. This necessarily has caused us to little the amount that would necessarily accumulate otherwise. It seems to be a wonderful way to cause creativity to be bred into the nature of a child from early on. She has never really had many noisy flashy toys, but mostly a collection of stuff from around the house that she has inherited as her own. Things like the basket with dog leashes in it will become a regular item of entertainment for extended periods of time.

I’m pretty sure that this has been the helpful release of an unjust burden we have put on our children rather than any cruel act of restriction. I’m definitely not of the camp to simply give my children everything they ask for. There has to be restraint for their own good and their proper maturation. I am always in a process of doing this in my own life so it seems right that I would help my children do the same.

Definitely better than getting a lame-o tie. Thanks for all those who were involved.

There was another one that I think I saved over accidentally that was really awesome; it was really grungy, like you would see on some trendy design. I got her using TuxPaint a year or two ago, she is really getting good at using it. For anyone with youngish kids, it is a great program to get them hooked on. I’m figuring it is basic training for a design job in the future.