Will you send the memo to my ILs too please?
Its only DS's first Christmas and he ended up getting loads of stuff which completely took me by surprise. I am extremely grateful for the gifts he got, but I am thanking my lucky stars that I gave my Mum strict instructions to only get certain things - but gave her a certain amount of free range within that - which thankfully no one else got.
The joke with my 3 year old niece was she go so much that she opened a present, put it in a pile without looking at it, and went "Next!" and was massively efficient at opening them all. I admit I felt massively embarrassed at the amount DS got compared to how much we gave her but at the same time, what we did give just disappeared into her mountain of toys anyway. And despite apparently agreeing with BIL and SIL to only buy for the kids - as it has got to the point that we are buying stuff for each other, we don't need or want just for the sake of it at a cost we can't really afford - we got given things and didn't have anything to give in return.
On top of that I am well aware that my MIL has deliberately bought noisy toys for DS as she thinks its funny to somehow torture DH. The trouble is, I'm the one who will have to put up with them, not him. The alternative is putting them away somewhere until she visits but that takes up our already very limited space.
In this particular case she is most definitely deliberately being a bitch. She's commented on it in the past long before we had children that she thinks its hilarious to do this. I fully expect drums and whistles in the future even if I make a point of saying don't get things like this (and tbh I already have). I will be amazed if there there isn't a showdown about it at some point.
It seems such a waste in the end. Its not as if I can just give MIL's gifts to someone else who would appreciate them as she'll definitely notice and I'm sure we will get issues from DS eventually as well, which isn't fair on him really. We will have to keep things somewhere until he has reached an age which is reasonable to pass it on to someone else and in order to prevent the showdown it will have to be removed from the packaging rather than giving away as something much more saleable/desireable for charity/resale.
As much as I'm loathe to do it, I think rough wish lists will have to be the order of the day in the future. I don't see what else we can do. We simply have not got the space for DS to have as much stuff as his cousin. We can't afford to 'keep up' with the spending of everyone else either. And I don't want to have to deal with the inevitable argument that DH will end up in with his mother (we are just getting over the last one as it is). Therefore the 'thought' bit for us in the future really is about not going over board as much as the actual gift(s).
Yes it is a very nice problem to have, which I very much appreciate isn't one every body has, and I am extremely grateful. However its the thought that counts with gifts, but it rapidly seems to descend into quantity over quality and competitive present giving rather than that thought element. It feels like the entire point of giving a gift gets lost somewhere in the mix.
Less is definitely more in the end.