When your baby turns 14,  it’s time to:

Get rid of the pre-school books you’ve saved all these years

Ditto the smocked rompers and duckling-appliqued Easter outfits

Box up the Legos

Send off the outgrown hoodies and ski jackets which fit before Christmas, but don’t anymore.

All this was done over the last few weeks, as I faced reality and vowed to cut down on clutter. 

Off to Goodwill went a box labeled Ian and Hugh’s Christmas books which had sat in a corner of the attic gathering dust, lo these many years.

Out went the outgrown coats and sweatshirts.

Next to leave, the baby outfits that surely, someone, somewhere, can use.

I was wrong about the toys being passe, however.  While they have not been much of a feature in our lives for several years, two recent events reminded me of how much boys like toys.

In the first instance, Ian gave Hugh a jacket for Christmas.  In the pocket of said jacket he had tucked a Carl Weathers action figure that he found at a thrift shop. 

Carl has been played with non-stop ever since.  Someone is constantly posing him or just absent-mindedly moving his arms and legs and head around out of idle nervous energy.  This tiny tough guy says and does outrageous things.  In terms of being appreciated and used, Carl may have been the very best Christmas gift of 2010.

In the second instance, Malcolm found an unopened tin of silly putty that I had hidden away in a desk drawer years ago.  This has been played with every single day since it was unearthed.  Putty has coated the glass knob of a cake dome.  It has been made into spirals and left on the counter for the next person to interpret.  It has been made into a whale consuming several snakes.  Yesterday it played a role in the football shrine set up in front of the Eagles game on TV.  What it will be next is anyone’s guess. 

What a relief.  Despite the fact that my baby is 14, he has not outgrown toys.  And neither have his big brothers.  Or his dad.  Or his Uncle Ken.  Or his dad’s childhood friend Eric.

Witness the characters they found to populate the Eagles shrine during yesterday’s game.

On second thought, I’m not sending the box of Legos anywhere - yet.

Here you see Malcolm, fascinated by the contents.

The contents: 

iPhone, 4G (x2) = love. The kids are amazed and jealous that Mom and Dad finally have the latest technology.  Everything’s up to date, until the next version comes out.

Steve was born last week at camp. In arts and crafts. Chase is his crafty father. I don’t think Steve has a mother. Poor Steve.

I believe that Steve was conceived with but one purpose in life. To torture his Uncle Noah.

The Scene – Every day for the last seven days:

Chase: No-aaaaaaah!! Say hi to Steve.

Noah: Get that thing away from me.

Chase: But it’s Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve. (Wave Steve back and forth).

Noah: Mom , he’s doing it AGAIN.

Chase: Steeeeeeeeeeeve!!!!! Steeeeeeeeeeve!

That’s how we ride in our house.

I feel sorry for Steve. Not so much because he is the bastard puppet child of an eight year old with questionable intentions but because his life expectancy is approaching zero.

Steve is about to go on the lam. Into the puppet protection program. It’s for his own good. Just pretend this post never happened.

So when the opportunity arose this week to engage in a little family philanthropy, Dave and I jumped. I had become aware of Cradles to Crayons a few months back. I have to say this is one of the coolest philanthropic organizations around. C2C collects everything a child needs to thrive from birth to age 12 and distributes it to thousands of needy kids each year through the city’s social services agencies. One C2C is in Boston; the other opened in Philly a year ago. The community donates gently used items (“in good enough condition for your own kid”) and care packages, custom made for each needy child, go out on a daily basis. With every package of clothing and toys, C2C also provides a week’s worth of books. If that is not good enough, C2C welcomes families into their warehouse all year long to work as volunteers. They call it the Giving Factory and you can even have your birthday party there! We were invited to a company event last night.

Anticipating this opportunity, we told the boys over dinner last week that we would be going – and each of them would fill a backpack with toys they do not use any more to give to a child who doesn’t have any toys. They thought we were kidding. Because “every kid has toys – c’mon”. A low parenting moment to say the least. Once we convinced them that there are children who are actually homeless, they proceeded to spend the rest of dinner clarifying each and every toy they weren’t going to give away. Chase was nearly apoplectic. We calmly explained that we would not give away anything that was still special to them.

Easier said than done. Everything is special to Chase. Trash is special to Chase.

Somehow, Dave conveniently disappeared when we were collecting our items. And pretty much everything I pulled out was vetoed.

Me: How about Candy Land? It’s for little kids.

Chase: No – the new version is different and we wouldn’t be able to ever see this version again.

Me: How about these matchbox cars? You have another 678 in this bin you can use.

Chase: Those are the BEST ones though.

Me: How about this drum? It has been sitting in the corner of the basement for a year and you haven’t even noticed.

Chase: I LOVE that drum. I’m so glad you found it.

Eventually I began to get frustrated – and Chase began to cry. This wasn’t how I wanted this project to go. It was as if I was giving pieces of him away. It didn’t matter that some very needy little boys would enjoy his stuff. It was still his stuff. He was sad and scared to let it go. And I obviously wasn’t getting that.

But alas, we managed to fill a backpack for each child – along with a hoard of other items from the basement (Excersaucer, stroller, play kitchen, two little bicycles, and (gulp) all their baby clothes).

Cut to the event: The kids had a great time. They were put in charge of sorting toys by age and they took to this task like bees to honey. We worked for about an hour and half without any complaints. It was totally fun.

The warehouse was stocked well with all sorts of items, similar to what we had brought. And I thought about the Rocket Power backpack that we gave and how much the boys loved Rocket Power. It was the first post-Blues Clues cartoon they watched. It sat there among all the other book bags waiting for a child to need it. That child would never know that it was the first one I bought Chase when he started kindergarten. And the Moms who got all of those warm snuggly onesies that I carefully dressed the boys in when they were babies will never know how much I loved those blue stripes. And suddenly, not unlike Chase, I felt sad.

And privileged.

Check out Cradles to Crayons at: www.cradlestocrayons.org

But for today, I share with you our ToysRUs pilgrimage on Saturday. You see, my boys are Pokemon boys. Those of you who have these boys know exactly what this means. For the uninitiated, Pokemon is like a modern day Dungeons & Dragons. There are thousands of characters to trade and battle on a hand-held Nintendo DS. The creatures have names like Wartortle, Venusaur, and (my favorite) Regigigas (sounds like Reggie Kickass). Noah is a particular die-hard. I listen to him and his brother and friends talk about this imaginary world with sly grins and sparkly eyes and pray that he grows out of this phase before high school. Because he will never get a date.

So late last week Noah goes apoplectic upon finding out that there is a free download of Darkrai at ToyRUs from 12-4 on Saturday and Sunday. From what I can gather from his mutterings, this is a good thing. I know Dave will have nothing to do with this as he hates Pokemon (even cute little Pikachu) so when the Saturday afternoon baseball games are canceled due to rain, I offer to drive the boys over.

Me: It’s free. It’s raining. We’re going.

Dave: You won’t get out of there without spending money. I guarantee you.

Me: I’m not buying anything. Just the download.

Dave: $24. I bet you spend $24 dollars.

Me: Grumble. Bite me. Smile. LET’S GO FELLAS!

The conversation on the way over is filled with anticipation on what exactly must transpire to achieve the download. I am praying to God that there is some dorked-out ToysRUs associate who will guide my kids through this process. We dash through the pouring rain into the store. My kids have their DS’ ready to go!

Apparently, the PokeMon leadership forgot to send the software to the Middletown ToysRUs. Faces fell and I looked around. I saw dozens of little boys wandering around aimlessly with their handhelds – like ghosts who haven’t crossed over into the light. There was Austin from karate…and over there was James, Noah’s best friend….and our old next door neighbors – they brought the entire family. We had all traveled separately to this single destination of despair. It was a little creepy.

To ease the pain, ToysRUs gave each kid a $5 dollar coupon for any DS game (which start at $20). I went willingly – baited and switched. Noah, Chase, and best friend James each shopped happily for a new game. Turned those frowns right upside down.

I took pride in the fact that Dave was wrong. I did not spend $24.

I spent $40.

Regigigas.

Mom! I need this one. THE ORCA.

Last year, he and his brother informed me that their “plain old” Super Soaker guns were grossly inadequate and we needed to purchase ARTIC BLAST guns, which I recall allowed you to load ice cubes into the chamber to freeze your enemies. At the time, I agreed to this Cold War because they really wanted to buy the COLOR SOAKER