1.03.2009

Tabled

Way back last summer, my mom, ever cautious and thoughtful—not to mention early—with the Christmas gifts, told me she was thinking of giving the girls a kid-sized picnic table for Christmas. Would we have room for it?

It was nice of her to ask; our house isn't huge, and we add furniture with caution. We have a lot to trip over already. We thought about it, and figured out we could use the table outdoors in summer and in our (imagined) basement art-making space in winter, and told her thank you and yes, we'd love to have a little picnic table. She chose a cute, simple one with two little benches, bought it on line, and had it shipped here; it arrived in early December.

We hadn't yet assembled it when, before our Christmas trip, we hosted A's family for a holiday brunch and gift exchange. His mom brought an embarrassment of gifts. The largest and most loved among them? An adorable kid-sized table. Not just any little table, but the Bunny Table, used already by two generations of A's family, crafted by an old family friend with bunny-shaped legs and bunny-shaped chair backs, painstakingly restored and painted by A's mom, and intended—and taken—as a delightful surprise by the girls.

I'd turn this into a multiple choice quiz à la Brooklyn Girl, but I have a feeling there's not really a choice. We've gotta suck it up and make room for two cute little tables in our lives, don't we?

4 comments:

  1. Oh, I hate that. A got a duplicate gift for Christmas and to spare everyone's feelings, neither could be returned. So now we have two doctors' kits. I'm fine with it, but it's sad when the givers feel like their gift wasn't as special as they'd intended.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can one just be for outside and one for in? We have two little cute kids' tables, too. One is upstairs and one down and they have different purposes. Actually the one upstairs has no chairs with it, it's more like a play table, holds a doll house.

    ReplyDelete
  3. But you have that gorgeous front porch! Too slanted?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yeah, pretty slanted. We probably will end up with one on the porch (or in some corner of the dining room, once the Christmas tree is down, if we can stand it) and the other going seasonally from basement to backyard. It's doable, it's just a little ... much.

    ReplyDelete