Duplicates

This weekend Alyce had her big McDonald's birthday party. I'll be writing about that soon. This was the first party for her where we didn't know what she was getting ahead of time. So we needed to talk to her about how to handle duplicate presents or presents she didn't like.

The night before while putting Alyce to bed I talked about how if she gets two of the same present or gets a present of something she already has to say thank you and not mention you already had it. I went on to say that we could exchange it later for a different toy. I think she understood the thank you part but the exchange seemed to confuse her. She kept saying she would have two of the same toy but in different colors. I left it at that having done the best I could at getting my newly minted 5 year old to be gracious when receiving a gift.

I didn't tell Mom that I had the conversation with Alyce. It didn't come up. Well the next morning Mom gets up with Alyce and proceeds to have the same conversation. Alyce pipes up and says "Mooom, Dad already talked about this to me". Well apparently Alyce is turning 15 instead of 5 as she's got it all figured out.

When we opened presents at her party Alyce did get a duplicate present. Luckily the duplicate was sitting at home as it was a gift from one of her classmates that had to cancel. Alyce did a great job with her gift; possibly better than Mom or myself. When we saw a duplicate we turned and looked at each other with a look of horror on our face. Alyce said thank you like she was supposed to and then showed her friend how to use it. It wasn't a perfect reaction but I think it is better than one would expect from a 5 year old.