At the request of some who have asked for more info about our No-Gift Birthdays, I thought I’d explain a little. When Freckles was turning 3  I found myself down in the playroom, sorting toys and packing some away for charity. Some had barely been played with.  I thought of the time and expense those toys had cost the people who had picked them out for him.  I thought of how many toys we were holding on to not because my child liked them most, but because of who bought them for him.   I thought of how many more toys were coming at this upcoming party and how long we would hold on to those ones, too. Mostly, I thought of how unnecessary it all was and how there had to be a better way. For the next couple years, we played around with birthdays for my oldest 2.  We tried themes, one year buying a fish tank and encouraging people to help fill it with fish and accessories as a gift.  Which was nice until the fish that your best friend gave you dies.  So that was a no-go. Then we tried nothing.  Bring nothing, we said.  Just yourselves. People still brought toys. Then that next year my youngest son was born and my friends wanted to host a Baby Shower.  Except, my goodness I had more than enough from my last babies.  I couldn’t possibly need more. So since Dh was deployed in Afghanistan, I decided instead that if my friends wished to bring a gift to the shower, it could be a generic gift for a new mom/baby and we would drop them off at the Regiment to be given out to all the new moms giving birth…