Birthday Presents

Somehow, another year has passed, and our girls will be 4 and 2 in mere weeks. Days, almost. I know this because Clio has been asking the exact number of days until her birthday on a regular basis for, oh, maybe 4 months now. When I tell her the number, she then makes me count. As in:

Clio: How many days until my birthday?
Me: 18
Clio: Can you count to 18?
Me: one, two, three...

and so on.

This weekend, while Dave was off mountain biking for Father's Day and I found myself at a loss as to what to do with these girls, we headed off to Grand Rabbit Toy Shoppe, perhaps the greatest toy store ever, to get ideas for their birthday wish lists. Clio and I did this last year, and while Dave thought it was crazy (and it did yield some strange gifts, like the Furr Real duck), i thought it was fun, and it looks like a tradition was born.

Clio came in the door and immediately started lifting up items and saying, Can we put this on my list? Can we put this on my list? This applied to anything in her line of vision, an "I randomly see it therefore I want it" approach, and the list included a very tiny stuffed panda bear, a stuffed meercat (or something equally skinny and rodenty, yet adorable), a tinkerbell costume, and a train set complete with train table. She was fickle in her desires and easily convinced to want anything and everything in sight. I think it is fair to disregard the entire venture and go with the things she has been asking for for months: a Snow White Polly Pocket doll and a Cinderella dress up dress. She would also be interested in any princess movie she does not already have, meaning: Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and any prequels or sequels the Disney machine may have churned out.

Eleri was more single minded. She spotted the doll strollers straight out of the gate and proceeded to push not one, but TWO of them around the store for the duration of our visit (over one and a half hours, but who's counting?) She collected Thomas the Train engines and put them in the stroller's storage compartments. She shrieked in anger when I pried her fingers off the handles in order to change her (stinky, stinky) diaper. Then, when we were returning the strollers to their rightful place (under tremendous duress), Eleri discovered her second desire: one of those plastic, real-looking babies with a soft body and a pacifier that actually goes into the mouth. She hugged that thing in a death grip and tried for many long minutes to get the paci in its mouth. When it was time to go, I once again had to forcibly remove the thing from her body and hand it to the salesgirl, who looked very sad at Eleri's wails and sobs. (I was not so moved.)

So. Dibs?