Today I brought the girls with me to my new favorite book store. Each girl has a birthday party coming up so it seemed like a good place to go for gifts. As always, the girls chose one book and one small toy for their friends and the same for themselves. I know I overindulge but somehow I can’t walk out of a bookstore without letting them get something…

Anyway, the confusion came today in the definition of a book. Although this store is thoughtfully laid out and the flashy, commercial books and toys are actually placed nicely out of sight of small children, Katherine found them. As hard as both Caroline and I tried, she could not be swayed away from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse’s Take Along Tunes.

And it was impossible (not really, but  you know where I’m going) to convince Katherine that this item was in fact a toy, not a book. “Mom! It has pages. It has words! There is a picture of a girl my age reading the book on the back cover.” All of these statements are in fact true statements.

So what then? To be hones,t we are most of the way through a relatively unscheduled vacation week and my resolve is slim. I let her buy the ‘book’ but I can’t shake my nagging annoyance at it. It is a toy. It has pages and words but it is a toy. I know that parents of all generations claim theirs to be the hardest to parent in but I swear… couldn’t a book just be a book and a toy just be a toy? Please.