Of Blenders and Birthdays

Yesterday, my daughter, Amelia, turned 2 years old. Oh my goodness people. I don't even know what to say on the topic... Can my baby really be 2? 2!? Heaven forbid.

Well lets face it... Amelia is incredibly bright and fabulous, and in actions, attitude and mannerisms, she's been essentially 2 for awhile. But yesterday made it official. I have a 2 year old. And I may be a bit in shock.

Andy and I bought her birthday presents before this buy nothing experiment even started... (by the way, my little challenge is almost 2 weeks old today! Hooray!) and we got her what I am sure every 2 year old wants... a pillow and a blanket. The pillow is one of those "husband" pillows with the little arms on the side that you can lean against and the blanket is actually just a piece of material that Amelia decided that she loved when we were at the fabric store one day. For my son's one year old birthday less than a month ago, I made him a pillowcase and bought him an interesting little wooden toy. We didn't do all that much.

But people, we didn't need to. Now, I don't mean this in a "kids don't need as many toys as we think they do" (though this is certainly true) kind of way or that our kids have enough toys already and we didn't want to buy them any more (ok, this is true, too...) What I mean by "we didn't need to" is that we have the first 2 grandchildren on both sides of the family and even if we actively tried to prevent people from giving Amelia and Victor toys it wouldn't happen. They would still get toys

So on their birthdays, my kids get a whole heck-ton of toys. In many ways, I am really touched by this incredible display of affection for my daughter and son. They spent hard earned money on them after all, and gave them things that they thought that they would like.

So what is the problem here?

For a while now, I have been following blogs like Joshua Becker's www.becomingminimalist.com and Leo Babauta's zenhabits.net... There are so many other great bloggers on minimalism, that it is a travesty to just name two, but those are the one's that come first to my mind. The minimalist lifestyle appeals to me greatly, and I can't honestly say that I am thrilled about adding more to our already cluttered house. I have been battling clutter for just about forever, and I am sick of it. It is one of the reasons I am doing a little "buy nothing for a quarter year" challenge for myself. With a 1 year old and a 2 year old, time for serious decluttering sessions are slim pickings, and I think the only real way that my 5 or 10 minutes here or there will make a difference is if things stop coming into my house.

Why I thought this would work with Christmas coming up is beyond me. I am clearly a crazy person.

On the subject of toys... my poor blender broke yesterday. This was no small blow to me. I use my blender for everything, and I use it hard. Shakes, mayonnaise, icing, pancake batter, you name it, and my blender has blended it. (Possibly this is how it got in such a state.) And yes, the canister is being held together by gorilla tape. It has a massive crack down the side of it and it leaks horridly, even after the masterful tape-up. Actually, I thought that would be the first to go, but you can always get a new canister for a blender, and I was counting down the days until I could ask for one from my husband and reasonably call it an early Christmas gift. What I didn't count on was black, vile smelling SMOKE pouring out of it while it was running, and the engine refusing to stop until I forced it to by unplugging it. I legitimately thought it was going to blow up. So... now its been declared dead.

Which is a shame because I used my blender all. the. time. and I can't buy a new one lest I break a self imposed challenge rule. Never fear, though, I am now borrowing one from my mother-in-law, so I won't be breaking any rules. Yet. But I want to. Oh, do I want to.