Direct Marketing

I've recently discovered that my children are highly susceptible to direct marketing. Once last summer they all had to come with me to Costco.  After steering me toward every sample table in the store, they ended up a completely captive audience to the demonstrator for whatever power blender company happened to be there that day.  So I left them standing there slack jawed while I circled about shopping in the nearby aisles.  When I finally forced them away from the table I had a full 10 minutes with each child's overlapping conversation parroting the many virtues of this incredibly fabulous product because, Mom, did I know how healthy it was....And, Mom, it makes hot soup....and cold smoothies! And we have to get this today, Mom! Because today it would be only $300 but if we wait until next week it would cost like $800!  Mom, it's on a super sale!  MOM!!  (Well, at least they know how I love to shop a good sale.) 

Then, in the last couple of months, our DVR hasn't been fully operational and so they have discovered that there are other tv channels outside of PBS kids.  They are now begging me to buy some amazingly fantastic program that teaches infants to read. Yes, you heard it: infants.  And they're not just memorizing the pictures.  No, they really know how to read!  Saul could do this! 

I must want Saul to be the dumbest baby on the block since I keep ignoring their urgent and well-placed advice.

Now with Christmas just around the corner, the number of catalogs arriving in the mail is on an upswing. Each new educational toy magazine that comes is instantly dissected into a comprehensive directory that lists out which toy should go to which child.  And the American Girl Doll catalogs are arriving at like two a week.  It's like they know I have two girls in the house.

The other day Isabel tells me that she really, really wants a popcorn machine for Christmas. I was confused, seeing as how she has been talking about wanting the little stuffed toy cat from the American Girl Doll catalog.  I was completely ignoring this request seeing as how it's got to be the most ridiculously overpriced plush toy ever. Then I saw the most recent circular that had come from Bed Bath and Beyond.  Check out what's smack in the middle of the front cover.

And, by the way, she also tells me that Olivia wants the cotton candy machine.  Suddenly, the little "Ginger" cat seems like it might must be a good idea after all.