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I go for experience and savings but experience is much better than a truck load of toys. Believe me if you start a kid out with lots and lots of presents under the tree he will only expect more and more. It ends up as entitlement. And the only therapy needed will be financial therapy for why the kid spends more than he has, is in debt and constantly expecting more "things" in his life.
DH and I are on 2nd family thru adoption. First family was raised just fine and they are great young adults but this time around we decided on a few different ways to do things. One big family gift at Christmas like a trip or flat screen TV and 3 less than $35 gifts for each kid. Usually it's books and clothes-and yes clothes count as gifts.
We pay for cell phone and car insurance year round for our 26 and 28 year old kids and that is their Christmas and B Day gifts.
At this point in our lives we have told all our kids that being able to take care of ourselves in our old age is the best gift we can give them so we are unwilling to spend big on them now. A college education without student loans is also a substantial gift. Nobody is lacking for fun and everybody is well adjusted and happy.
At that age they love most anything. You could get him anything from a large ball, to books for very young children that he cannot destroy, large legos, simple wooden puzzles, that new larger size Dinosaur from Fisher-Price, a stuffed animal if he is into that, or one of those coloring boards that only shows up on the board so makes no mess.
When our kids were very young, we got too much stuff. We finally asked some people to stop giving them things, we just asked for clothing if they wanted to give a gift. Anything else we either put it away for re-gifting for birthday parties, or we donated it to charties. A savings bond or deposit for college makes a nice gift.
At two, all they care about is unwrapping presents, they don't care how much the present cost. It could be underwear or socks but they'll unwrap and look around for something else to unwrap and only play with whatever toy after the unwrapping is done. Or sometimes they get one gift and want to play with it and have no interest in other gifts.
Books. Large Truck, the Tonka ones, with lights flashing are very cool. They also have an ambulance, fire truck, and police car. They love those. I had to buy extra ones when I taught school, because no one would share, and everyone wanted the fire truck. A fire hat to go with the truck would also be super cool. You could do like a whole "theme" gift, fire hat, fire truck, and book "curious george".
you could buy him a porsche.
But then again maybe not.
My suspicion is that a 2y.o. enjoys unwrapping things. I would think that if you could some how break the present into several and wrap each one separately. Someone suggested leggo. How about put all the blue bits in one parcel and all red bits in another and so on. He could have fun guessing what colour is next.
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