SIL sent the kids some belated birthday stuff.
(DD's birthday was in June and DS's was October, so yeah, belated, but
I'm honestly not judging because we weren't expecting anything to begin
with.) She sent DD a couple of those outfits with the
overly ruffly pants
and mixed prints chevrons and stuff. NMS, but DD ate them up, so
that's cool. And she sent DS a Leap Frog "phone" and "tablet." Which he
has absolutely zero interest in. We showed him the phone, but he would
rather try to climb into the dishwasher, or chase the cat, or play with a real phone, or engage in
one of his other favorite pastimes. We haven't even taken the
tablet-thing out of the box, we turned it on in demo mode and DS simply gives zero fucks about it. And DD
and I spent literally two hours over the holiday weekend cleaning
up the playroom, so I am acutely aware of how many unused, unwanted toys
we already have cluttering up our space.
Is it terrible of me to toss
the tablet in the Toys for Tots bin at work and call it a day?
I mean, somewhere there must be a kid who would love that thing,
right? It's not a total piece of crap, it's a decent product. Brand new, never opened. I feel sort of Grinchy giving DS's stuff away, but words cannot express how uninterested he is, and this is a kid who is interested in everything: the garbage truck, the neighbors' dogs, the moon in the sky, the wind in the trees. And I sort of feel like it's unkind to SIL, but we already thanked her, and she lives far away and we rarely see her, so it's not like she'll be over for Christmas dinner wondering where it went. And the thought of one more bit of kid clutter gives me hives.