How many presents do you give your child for their birthday?

[egoldber]

Just curious. I am about to start wrapping Sarah's gifts for this Saturday and I am wondering how many is too many?

She is definitely getting a set of wooden building blocks and a large number of plastic animals. How much else is appropriate for a 3 year old?

Here's what I "could" give her (that is, I could pull out of the "toy closet" and just wrap):

a battery powered Thomas engine
a Thomas accessory (a bridge)
Little People castle set
wooden dollhouse
wooden dollhouse furniture

We asked for no gifts at her birthday party, but I know that some people are going to ignore that and bring gifts anyway. FYI, her grandparents and other family don't typically buy her many gifts, sp we are not expecting any kind of grandma windfall!

[Melanie]

Too many. I'm a toy junkie...I try to restrain, though, b/c he has more than he can ever play with.



http://www.gynosaur.com/assets/ribbo...pphire_24m.gif

[Karenn]

Colin "usually" (for his only two birthdays, at least ;) ) gets one "big" present from Mommy and Daddy and maybe a smaller present or two if I find the perfect thing. This year he got his FP airport and a pair of gardening gloves. However, we have 8-10 extended family members that will also give him gifts (often toys), so he won't be at all lacking in the toy department.

[trumansmom]

I don't have any real thoughts on this, but I just can't believe Sarah is already going to be 3! Wow! I remember when you were preparing for her first birthday.

Happy Birthday Sarah!!

Jeanne
Mom to Truman 11/29/01 and Eleanor 4/14/04

[nitaghei]

Well - Neel's only had one birthday, so, with that caveat:

I think what we'll keep on doing is one big gift, and 2 little ones, with the little ones being books or something similar. Of course, in our case, things are complicated by the fact that his birthday is so close to Christmas.

My brother and SIL pretty much try to stick to one big gift with their kids. And these are happy, unspoiled kids, even though they are being raised in upper NW DC by parents who could pretty much get them anything. :) So it seems like a good role model for me (my nephew is 8, my niece is shortly turning 4).

Oh yes, they don't get to play with their gifts until they've done a thank-you note, which is also something I intend to emulate.

And happy birthday to Sarah! I can't believe what a big girl she's become. Never really got a chance to say it the other day - but she's even cuter now than she was last year!

Nita
mom to Neel, January 2003
dog mom to a cocker and a PWD

[alkagift]

I'm not sure I'm qualified to establish a "usual" since Matthew's only had one Christmas and one birthday, but for us we tend to buy one "big" gift and one smaller gift. A trike and a little people set would be an example. My parents tend to get him toys too, but not much, and he is happy as a clam.


Allison
Mommy to Matthew Clayton, 5/19/03

[MelissaTC]

I actually restrained myself this time around and we only got him one big gift - a monster wagon from Harbour Freight (thanks to Melanie's posts!). He really loved it. Granted, I rented a place out for his party but I was not going to have all those 2 yr olds running around my house! He received nice gifts from his friends as well. Not too much from the Grandparents.

Happy Birthday Sarah! Sounds like she is going to get some great toys! I wish I had a dollhouse!

[jasmine]

Happy Birthday to Sarah! DS turns 3 tomorrow, and I
had the same dilemma. I have a horrible (or good :-) habit of
buying toys on clearance at Target so I have a lot of toys I
could give DS. We also asked for no gifts, but have already been
told by a few people that they felt it wouldn't be the same
if they didn't get him something. Luckily his grandparents are not big gift givers either.

So for now we are giving him:

Battat easel from Costco
Fisher-Price Geotrax Train
Tonka remote control truck

I had been planning to give him more, but when he was looking at
a toy catalog last week, he kept pointing at a wooden garage saying
we had to buy it for him, I realized I had the beginnings of a
materialistic child. So I vowed to not buy anymore toys on clearance unless it was something he really could use, and to only give it to him for special occasions.

Monica

[lisams]

We usualy give DD one big gift and a few smaller things that go with the big gift. For her b-day in Nov she is getting a wooden doll house, with some furniture and family as seperate gifts. For Christmas she is getting a playhouse for outside and some small things to go inside. The problem I have with too many toys at once is she doesn't seem to really enjoy them as much when there are so many other new toys. We do keep a stash of stuff and I will pull something out when we are having a blah day (pulled out a Barney coloring book yesterday!). For some reason, I don't like having a lot of new toys at once, I like having them spread out and saving the biggies for holidays and birthday.

I'm getting giddy already thinking about her birthday and the holiday season!!!

Lisa

[khakismom]

I am really trying to scale back on the number of gifts I give. It doesn't seem lika a ton, but Kathleen gets so focused on one gift that you end up forcing her to open her others and to keep the gift-opening moving. I debated putting no gifts on her invitations for her last (3rd) birthday, choose not to do it, and ended up wishing I had. She got way too much that she could play with--and it wasn't even a huge party.

That said, we got her a princess pop-up castle, a set of Kelly dolls with a birthday playset, an Angelina book, and a Gymbo nightie.

Same thing with Christmas. We got her one large gift and then a bunch of small random gifts, like crayons. 2-3 gifts would've sufficed. So I am taking my GF's advice for Christmas. Jesus got 3 gifts, so the girls will only get 3 gifts from us/Santa (maybe less, taking into consideration gifts from the grandparents and aunts and uncles).

I'm sure this was more info than you were looking for! ;) I hope Sarah has a wonderful 3rd birthday. Happy birthday Sarah!!