The Wow Factor

I really want to get Geetle something for Christmas that “WOW”s her. Pookie is not really into surprises and the wow factor. He will reluctantly unwrap his presents, look at them and basically ignore them for weeks after Christmas. But that is just because he likes the familiar and takes a while to warm up to new stuff. But Geetle is your typical red-blooded, all-American preschooler. She loves to get presents and is very into the whole experience.

BAGD and I tend to buy dorky toys for the kids. We prefer puzzles, games, toys that have a long life expectancy, in terms of durability and appeal. We tend to stay away from character toys (Dora, Diego, TMNT, Blues Clues, etc). I don’t really know why, except that we are kind of cheap and old-fashioned. Long before we knew that Pookie had Autism and would get too obsessed with noisemaker toys, we banned them. We “forget” to put batteries in things and force the kids to make their own siren noises for the fire truck. We started doing it because we just got tired of all the loud and annoying toys. But it ended up being a very important thing for Pookie, who tends to get obsessed with pushing the noise button over and over again.

So, this year what about Geetle? She is not into character things, she only watches PBS and DVDs, so she does not know what is advertised on TV. She does not know about Bratz, Barbie the Island Princess or Butterscotch the Ride-on Horse. She does not ask for specific things, like the Littlest Petshop Pet Show with real working doggie door. She is not obsessed with anything except Arthur by Marc Brown, and we already have all his books. How do we WOW her this Christmas? Well, I have a few things in mind:

• She got glasses recently. When she picked them out, the eye tech told her they were from the Tinkerbell collection, because they had a dot of fairy dust on the arm. She loves her glasses, and now she says she loves Tinkerbell. We have not seen Peter Pan, so I think she just likes that Tinkerbell is a pretty fairy. So, I got her a Tinkerbell sweatshirt. I think she will like it.
• She loved the movie Madagascar. Her school is working with a learning plan called ZooPhonics and she is ALL ABOUT wild animals right now. We have a Map of the World shower curtain and she knows where Madagascar is. We got her the movie on DVD.
• I am not sure why, but she wants a Magic Set, one of the few specific things she asked for. We found a great one on Amazon. Its by Melissa & Doug. Its wooden and comes with a box to store the pieces in. One reason that BAGD and I hate the toys they sell in the Walmart toy aisle is that once you lose a few pieces, its all done. How can a girl play Littlest Petshop if she cannot find her Puggle? Anyway, I imagine we will have our first magic show before breakfast, being the natural born entertainer that she is.
• As her preschool class ages, they are beginning to play more games at school. They learned Hide and Seek this year. I hate Hide and Seek, call me a bad mother. But she loves it, so we got her the Hide and Seek Safari Game. You hide the tiger statue and then someone else uses a wand to find the tiger. As you get warmer, the lights on the wand turn from red to green. She will love it and I will not have to crouch in the closet or get yelled at for hiding behind my newspaper anymore.
• Pookie and Geetle like to pretend they are ice-skating on the carpet, something Pookie learned at school last year as part of a movement song. We bought them Carpet Slides for Christmas. You strap them to your feet and skate across the carpet. We may have to explain this one, but they will love it.

So, I hope that these presents will WOW Geetle. I want her to open the present and gasp.

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