Christmas Shopping - Quincy,MA

She is old enough now where she'll notice what you buy and remember it when she unwraps her gifts. I know that from experience! Here are a few things I did after one botched trip with my son last year:
*Do your homework-know exactly what you want to buy and where it is before you go out. This way you can be quick and throw things in your cart without her noticing.
*If you are shopping with a cart, give her a book or small toy to distract her with while you slip things into the cart.
*If you are someplace like Target or Walmart, grab a big towel to put in your cart, so you can keep the goodies underneath it until you check out.
*Try and quietly tell the cashier not to talk to your daughter about the toys (cashier did this to me last year-got all friendly with my son after I did such a great job of distracting him and asked him who all these toys were for).
*If you are shopping at the mall, use a stroller with an umbrella-you can put things on top of it without her seeing! This only works for smaller things:)

Good luck with shopping!!

When my grls were little and I had to take them shopping I used to tell them that it was for a nephew or niece or even tell them that u have a friend who cant get around to shop and so u volunteered to help her with it. Its not a good thing to fib but in some cases u have to do what u have to do. Plus she is still young you could ask her to help u get gifts for these kids or tell her its for make a wish trees.It always worked for me.... Good luck hope this helps.

I am a single mom too and my kids are now 16, 14, 12 and I had the same problem with Christmas shopping. If youcan get a family member to babysit for a few hours so you can get her shopping done and that way she can not see what you got her,and for that matter if you have any other kids to chop for get that out of the way too. That way when you need to shop for the adults for Christmas she won't be as bad to bring she won't be interested in the older people's things.
If if you know of any one that babysits you can do that too teenagers look for money this time of the year too. That's what I do for the people in my building they get the first hour free and then it's $3 an hour.

Do you have family around to watch her so you can shop? If not as a friend to go with you and have the friend push the cart with the toys so your daughter thinks that your friend is buying the toys not you.

K.,

Internet shopping!! Toys R Us, Wal-Mart, Target, all have awesome toy selections online. You can do it while she's napping or after she goes to bed, and she won't have any idea what's in the boxes when they come.

If you don't internet shop for whatever reason, see if you can get someone to watch her, and do one marathon all-day shop for her gifts. It's not a big deal to take her when you buy everyone else's, so just get hers out of the way.

Can you get out one night before hubby leaves to do her shopping? Wal-Mart is open 24 hours, and lots of stores have started their holiday shopping hours, so they are open till ten or so.

Good luck!

I have a couple suggestions...first of all see if there is a MOPS (Mothers of preschoolers) chapter in your area that you can join. I know that mine has mom's day out where you could run errands. Also see if you can get together with some of the other moms from your husband's national guard unit to arrange something. But if all else fails tell her they are for a niece or friends. I did that with a number of things last year (and my daughter was three at the time)and she totally fell for it. The more she wined that she wanted it the more I knew she would love it on Christmas morning!!
oh...one more thing I just thought of...alot of grocery stores have the daycare area and usually have a lot of toys during Christmas. Stock up while grocery shopping and hide them in the bottom of the bags...hope these help!!

What area do you live in. My husband is in the guard as well and may be deployed again in March....
Since I know how hard it is, if you are in my area I'd be happy to help out....Let me know, you can email me at ____@____.com
S.