Nano, No Nano?

We are celebrating Kira's 10th birthday this week. It's hard to believe that a whole decade ago my oldest child came into this world, her ten-pound self necessitating an emergency C-section and rendering our stockpile of newborn-size diapers completely obsolete. TEN YEARS. Three more years until she's a teenager. Six years away from Sweet Sixteen. Almost halfway to drinking age. (Hear that? It was the sound of doors being bolted and the liquor cabinet being locked up.) Oh, and I forgot to mention - only twenty more years until the age we've decided she can begin to date.

While us adults have been tossing around warm fuzzy memories about birthdays past and musing on milestones to come, Kira has been hard at work, putting into words the essence of this important day: her birthday gift list, detailing not only those items she desires but also where they may be found ("Naruto GameBoy Advance cartridge [order from Naruto store, located at www.naruto.com. Or call my mom.]") I agreed to use the list to discreetly provide ideas to inquiring friends and relatives, but I put my foot down at her idea of having the fifty page tome collated and bound at Kinkos and delivered to everyone via UPS.

The first item on the list, and the thing she has been requesting for the past two years is an iPod. Rigel and I have been thinking about getting her one, but every conversation starts with, "When I was her age..." As in, "When I was her age, I got a piece of old leather for my birthday" or "When I was her age, I was hard at work in a Malaysian rug factory to earn the money for my 8-track." Lies, all of them, but I guess it was a way to help us sort out the feelings of guilt we were having in maybe overindulging her, and feeling like we had fallen prey to the electronics frenzy that has overtaken our lives. Should we get her something more practical? More socially responsible? Rigel had some ideas, but I told him I didn't want to be in the room when she opened that composting kit.

When the girls were small I tried my best to take the sensitive, low-tech approach to parenting. Talking Elmo? Bah! Come take a look at this fine Amish wooden doll! Remote controlled pony? But why bother with that when I've set up your play town made out of recycled pegboard and corn cob people! It didn't take long for the cold hard truth to dawn on me - boring, PC toys were no match for anything that lit up, spun around and spewed soap bubbles out of a spinning princess hat. Soon I was buying electronic toys by the cartload and cleaning out entire inventories of AA batteries at Target. To our credit we did hold off for three years in getting them Gameboys, but only because they were starting to wise up to the 'BoyGame' I had fashioned out of a sardine can and a transistor radio and tried to pass off as 'the newest thing in electronic handhelds!"

So, we've decided to give in, to fly our materialistic freak flag and get our oldest child an iPod Nano to mark her first decade on this earth. To show that even though we live green we can still effectively contribute to the global landfill. To say to the world, 'you don't always have to earn your children's love, sometimes you can buy it.' Call us shallow, call us overindulgent, call us jelly-spined pushovers buckling to peer-pressure, but I can't wait to see the look on her face when she peels back that wrapping paper and sees the Apple logo peeking out. And I'll bet all the money in the world that at that moment we'll be happy we didn't buy her those mutual funds.

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