Shopping for the 2-5 year old crowd is veeeeery interesting. Curse the extended cable channels for aiming advertising at children (sadly, though, I still love Disney, evil company that it is - yes, I AM a hypocrite)! My kids have seen just enough tv to say "Mom, can we have that?" at every commercial. It's compounded by school classmates and the latest "cool" toys, characters, movies and so on and so forth.

So I find myself faced with a Christmas where I don't know what to get my kids. They have enough junk... and they have grandparents who will lovingly buy them whatever they want, both on a small scale and the big ticket items.

Additionally I find myself faced with a kind of "moral" dilemma of the kinds of toys out there. They're complex, have small parts, are all plastic, and are fairly uncreative.

Can't I just buy them some socks and be done with it?!? I guess not, Phoebe hates socks.