Overkill

I count my blessings every day for the good relationship and love of my mother-in-law (The Nonni!). She is an amazingly generous and loving person. She accepted me whole-heartedly into her life and family and loves my children with an intensity I would second only to the love Dan and I have for them.

However.

The Nonni goes completely and utterly overboard with gifts and money. It is not uncommon for her to hear that I'll be doing seasonal clothes shopping for the boys and to hand me an envelope of anywhere from 300-500 bucks in it. See? AMAZINGLY GENEROUS. And CRAZY! On my birthday, mothers day and Christmas I get cards with money. Never less than $100. CRAZY.

She also gets hooked on collecting things. Liam got into Thomas and Friends when he was about 18 mos old. Nonni proceeded to collect over 100 trains from the Take Along series. She gave him tons and kept loads at her house...which have SOMEHOW filtered over here over the past year and a half. Hot Wheels? She has about 3 double decker cases of them at her house. Not including the oversized die cast metal ones she has as well. Eighteen wheelers and obscene monster trucks. CRAZINESS!

Then she was shopping for a toy for Liam right before Seamus was born. He picked out a toy from the Imaginext Jungle Adventures series. Only I don't think Nonni realized it was a series at first. My sister saw that he had it and, when she visited the hopsital after Shea was born, she innocently brought Liam some additional animals that went with the set. My mother-in-law realized it was an expanded set and proceeded to buy almost every other piece to it. The Nonni almost bought the biggest piece but Liam thinks it's a bit too scary.

ANYWAY.

You see my point? Well recently Liam has taken to puzzles. The 25-or-so piece variety. He got one from my sister a month or so ago and did it over and over and over again. So much so that his sitter brought him 2 more that she happened to have left from her brothers child years. Then I got a Buzz Lightyear puzzle for his Easter basket. Sooooo...Easter day comes and as always we go to Nonni's for brunch and fun. The Easter Bunny OF COURSE goes to Nonni's too. And Liam gets.... wait for it.... THREE MORE boxed puzzles and a book that has like 7 puzzles embedded in the pages.

Liam LOVES puzzles but honestly do we need 7 boxed puzzles and a book of puzzles? Doesn't that seem like a lot? And I love it when people come over and comment on how many freaking toys my kids have when we hardly BUY ANY?! Everyone else does! I do buy the odd matchbox car or coloring book, crayons, that sort of thing. But sheer volume of toys.... are from everyone else! I am happy that my children are blessed with these things. But it's almost embarrassing. We have this gorgeous storage center in the playroom... and it's stuffed to the freaking GILLS. I try to weed out toys but then feel guilty. I need to just lose the guilt and donate or pitch some stuff. I do a "crappy toy" sweep every other week or so - weeding out the happy meal prizes, broken toys, and very small pieces from sets that Liam wouldn't miss and Shea could choke on.

Anyway - I started this post to vent about Nonni and her penchant for buying too much and not knowing when to stop. Perhaps I should take some of that advice with this post.