Presents! Or; Don't Come Home Without People Magazine

Yeah, yeah, Donny's back. The real question - whaja bring us?

And so, I give you....the Present Rundown

1. For Ariella - a Tetris game. But not the Gameboy kind. (Sing with me! Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doooooo. Digression: Why isn't there a better way to type tunes? You know the song I'm talking about, though, right?) It's real, live, plastic Tetris blocks, and you're supposed to be able to take them and form a cube. Supposedly there are over 9,000 solutions. We're still working on one. Also, they only fit into the box when they're in a cube, so when Ariella puts them away at night, there are always some Tetris limbs akimbo, sticking out of the box at awkward angles.

2. For Yaakov - a Transformer! It's more than meets the eye! (Apparently, the theme of the presents is "The Late Eighties.") Anyway, it looks really awesome - a green car that turns - transforms, if you will - into a robot dude. But the first hitch - it came with an instruction booklet.

Now, I understand needing instruction booklets for really complicated, one-time assembly items, like a Space Station. Or a crib. But a Transformer? A toy that a child should, in a perfect world, be able to do himself? Also, the extent of Yaakov's reading, thus far, is:

1. He recognizes the "O."
2. He writes his name (usually backward) in Hebrew.

Anyway, Donny worked on Tedious Prime for a while, and at the end, had a car in one hand, and an arm in the other.

Hmmm.....

Scene: Yaakov has a friend over to play.

Yaakov: Do you want to see my Transformer?

Friend: Yesh!

Yaakov: Let's turn it into a car!

Friend: Yesh!

Yaakov: Okay, it's really easy! All we have to do is sit here and wait five hours till my daddy gets home from work!

Friend: Let's just go back to gluing our fingers together.

Anyway, we promised Yaakov we'd get him a new toy. A regular car. That does not come with a spare arm.

3. For Nadav - an awesome, soft, cuddly, light-blue Snoopy dog. Two of them, actually, because we learned the hard way what happens when your child becomes addicted to her stuffed animal and there is only one. One. And you can look into every store, search online, call the company, climb every mountain, ford every stream, and at the end of the rainbow, there is STILL no other Bunny to be found. But that's a story for another time. The point is, we have two Snoopy dogs.

4. For me - a brand-new office chair. But that has to wait to come on my parents' lift. Until then, lots of candy (ohmigod - dark chocolate Reese's PB cups) and magazines, and DVDs of The Nanny. Eh, who needs the chair?