bunnies!

Against my better judgement, we got the girls a couple of baby bunnies.  My younger daughter has been asking for a rabbit every day for more than a year.  I have given her every argument: we have cats, bunnies scratch and dig, and the smell...  I have been saying no, and explaining why, for more than a year (every day).  It's not so much that she wore me down (although there certainly was some of that) it's more that it just started to seem mean to not get her a bunny.  She drew bunnies, talked about them and imagined them.  On long car trips we had to prohibit the topic of rabbits or she would drive us crazy.  She has been unrelenting and somehow it didn't seem fair to keep holding out.  And lately, holding out seems like something I do a lot.

My older daughter is the only girl in sixth grade without a blackberry, and her dearest wish is for a fancy phone.  She mentions it often but not incessantly; she was more insistant last year--I think we wore her down.  It pains me because I know she suffers.  But the phone is more complicated than the bunny.  I have ideas about materialism and overly technological childhoods; I was mostly just trying to avoid a nuisance by refusing the rabbit.  We tell her to wear her difference like a badge, "don't get sucked into all that materialistic crap."  But you know, easy for us to say, we aren't in the sixth grade.  I'm not entirely sure what to do about the phone.  I am getting my first fancy phone in the next week or two and I'm planning to share it with her.  It doesn't sit entirely comfortably with me (am I giving in?).

Funny thing about the bunnies, when we gave them to the girls my little one was strangely silent.  Later she asked me if people who get what they want are greedy.  She said she felt a little bit bad about getting the bunny; guilty.  I'm still not entirely sure what to make of this.  I told her that she shouldn't feel bad and that she should just enjoy her bunny; that we gave it with a lot of love.  She seems to be over her guilt now and is genuinely thrilled.  I'm waiting to see what her next obsession will be.  I hope it isn't a fancy phone.