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While I’m certainly appreciative that I grew up in a time of Transformers, Voltron, Robotech, etc … I’ve started looking at the toys that are available to my son. You know what, we were gipped.

Exhibit A, the Dinosaur Easter Basket pictured above. I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up all we ever got was the gender neutral ones made out of twigs and straw.

Exhibit B, Lego Star Wars Death Star, Imperial Star Destroyer, and Millenium Falcon. Girl Plankton doesn’t buy my excuse that purchasing them would be an investment. I’ve tried convincing her that they would be an investment in our children’s geek credentials. That didn’t go over as well as I had hoped. Subsequently, I tried convincing her that they would be collectors items which could be exchanged for large sums of money upon acceptance of our children into Ivy League institutions. To her credit she pointed out that I wouldn’t be allowed to remove them from the packaging if that was the case.

Exhibit C, Toys R Us has a Robots Category on their website. Completely glossing over the fact that when I was young the only two options for shopping at Toys R Us were waiting for the catalog to come with the Sunday paper, or go to the store with the folks. Nowadays all you have to do is bookmark the Robots Category on their website. How effing cool is that?

I think it’s painfully clear to everybody how badly we were screwed. We had Easter Baskets, but not fuzzy dinosaur ones. We had Legos, but the most you could hope to create was a tower or a bridge. Sometimes you had most of the necessary pieces to put together a helicopter or an airplane. Nobody had gone to the trouble of putting together a kit to build a Death Star with them. We had plenty of robot toys, but we didn’t have such convenient methods of shopping for them. Our only option was to beg our parents to drive us to the store. Even then we were at the mercy of the clerks who stocked the shelves. Maybe they had Roy Focker’s VF-1 that you saved for months to buy. Chances were that you were going to have to settle for that Zentraedia Battle Pod because it was the last one on the shelf. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Of course, it could have been worse. All our father’s had had to play with when they were kids was fire and the wheel.

Our daughter’s birthday counter incremented this weekend. Celebrations started with an early soccer game on Saturday. If AYSO was in the score keeping business, then this would have been recorded as a victory for the Purple Butterflies. Following the game I had to rush her to the Treehouse Museum where Girl Plankton was already busy setting up the Pirate Party. Note the absence of Ninjas.

The family stuff started this morning. We had a really good breakfast and waited until 11:13 A.M. to let her begin opening presents. She got a new bike from us, and horseback riding lessons from her grandparents. Afterwards we took a drive to the local farm where the lessons will take place this summer. Then we went to her favorite restaurant and they sang that obnoxious birthday cadence they do there and she got this huge ice cream dessert.

Now we’re just sitting around at home wishing that the wind would blow a little bit so that we could go fly her new kite.

Another good Christmas this year. My parents and brother made it out here safely. Santa’s gift made it here in time. The dreadful flu that devastated my house a week before Christmas appears to have been vanquished. Nothing serious came up from work while I’ve been on call. So, I claim success!

Our daughter only asked Santa for one thing this Christmas. It’s some silly toys that come with some children’s books. Not an unreasonable request. However, Santa has had an unreasonable time fulfilling it.

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My son started making these really odd noises today.  You have to watch the video to understand, but it’s like something out of the Excorcist.  You half expect his head to rotate a full 360 degrees halfway through this.  It’s that creepy.

For several minutes now I’ve been arguing with my daughter. She’s convinced that she should be able to fast forward through the commercials. I know that it’s live television, so there’s nothing to fast forward through. I get bonus points though because I never used the phrase, “when I was your age.”

When I got home tonight Girl Plankton was giggly. She had the T.V. on in the background and had realized that the song The Nth Degree by Morningwood was being used in an ad for the Mercury Mariner. Googling has revealed that it’s been part of the commercial for 2+ months now. We probably hadn’t caught this before tonight because of the DVR.