Wild nephew

My brother has five children. Three are his, two are from his wife's first marriage. I adore all of them equally. Three of them are married and have eight combined children. One of the youngest, age 5, is having a birthday party today. I always enjoy going and seeing the family, catching up on news.

The hard part for me is the gifts. What does a five year old hyperactive, intelligent boy need? His parents and grandparents buy him every toy ever created. I tend to get things that require imagination. When my daughter was younger, I refused to get her toys that used batteries. She is very self-entertaining, artistic, and creative. I think this is at least partly due to the fact that her toys were not the kind that you turn on and they entertain you. She could play for hours with a shoe box and a few shoulder pads. She would make a house and people.

Anyway, I tend to buy the kids things like play-doh, notebooks, markers, crayons, flashlights (one exception to the no-battery rule), magnifying glasses, books, jewlery kits, tools, and things along that line. Last year I gave this nephew a set of plastic golf clubs and a bug kit. The parents always look a little nervous when I show up, ever since the ant farm incident. This year I am at a total loss of what to get.

Lots of you are parents of young children or have young siblings. Any suggestions for me? I am just sitting here looking out at yet another 3 inches of new snow and trying to come up with an idea. One time I wanted to get him a pencil box and fill it with quarters, but my daughter said that was stupid. This derision comes from the child who used to play with my silver dollars for hours.

This is the same nephew whom I watched for a few hours before Christmas so his mom could go shopping. When she came for him, I was literally cringing in my chair, the dogs were whimpering behind the chair, and he was flapping around the living room on my exercise ball. I was telling him that we do not bleed on the carpet and he should be a little more cautious. I was so glad to see my niece! I had to give him a plastic fork when I fed him because he kept deliberately scraping the fork across the plate and tapping it, making horrid noises. He is an extremely busy child.

Sigh. What do I know about little boys? I raised a girl. She is afraid of spiders and thinks camping out is the Holiday Inn. Last week I came home and she was in the bathroom screaming over a little house spider. She was standing on the toilet seat and refused to move until I got the spider out of there. I considered either leaving it or taking pictures, but I was laughing too hard to hold the camera.