My house looks just like your house right now. Toys lying around that have no home, half-finished art projects, books piled on the counter and corners of tissue paper floating around under the couch.

It is a little much.

We love Lego here at Chaos. There are Star Wars sets and headless minifigs lying all over the house. There are corrupted cars and colourful towers piling up in the corners. And we aren't alone.

What parent hasn't had a nostalgic moment putting together a Lego set? What parent hasn't shouted with frustration after finding a misplaced piece near the end of the instructions? And what parent hasn't screamed with agony after standing on a tiny brick lying on the ground?

And yet, Lego is one of the few toys that kids and parents both love. We feel good about the educational and motor skill development that comes from playing with the little bricks, and experience a moment of parental pride in our sons' obvious brilliance when they complete 87 steps in a short time.

But what about the girls?

There are some gaps in my holiday shopping due to a lingering flu-like thing and you know, life. So you know what that means -- I will be doing some panicked last-minute shopping which can lead to bad decision making. That is, unless I can figure out ahead of time what are the best toys ever, that I can get with the least effort.

It's obvious once you think about it.

Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. And as I write this, I am freaked out a little bit because I thought it was tomorrow night. Because my calendar says tomorrow, but I should know that Jewish holidays always start the night before, on the eve. Luckily, I have eight days to get caught up.

I know what you are thinking: eight days?

When people find out that we celebrate Chanukah, after they get over the first awkward Happy Chanukah statement, they always want to know a few things. Like:

I tune in to Saturday Night Live each week while my husband snores beside me just to catch Seth Myers on Weekend Update. (I know, we are a wild and crazy bunch!)

But this Saturday, through my sleepy haze, I heard Seth mention Toronto. He was taking a Toronto school to task for banning "hard balls" in the playground. He was wondering if the principal was going to put a hinge in the teeter-totter next. (Silly Seth, there hasn't been a see-saw in a school playground in years.)

My eight-year-old son runs off the field and asks me the score. "Um, I have no idea," is my answer.

"It's five - two for us," yells a teammate.

No, it's eight - 1," yells another.

The final score isn't such a big deal at our soccer house league, there is no scoreboard, so I'm never sure what the final numbers are. I guess someone knows. It doesn't really matter because the finals are a round robin anyways. I like that the score is de-emphasized, it's nice to win but it's pretty horrible when either team gets totally demolished.

Oh Scholastic, how I hate you with your TV and movie tie-ins, your copious amounts of stickers and little dolls masquerading as learning experiences.

But how I love the opportunity to get cheap books, and see the kids' excitement to rifle through your newsprint pages. And their smiles when they return home with bags of books.

I hate the feeling of guilt that I am somehow robbing my bookstore of our patronage, but like how the teacher gets a kickback for school supplies (or do I hate that because it is kind of blackmail?).

“Mom, can I have some orange juice?” asks son number one.

“Orange juice,” echoes son number two.

“JINX!” yells son number one.

JINX!!” yells son number two at the same time.

“I jinxed you! You can’t talk!”

“You can’t jinx under a roof!”

“Yes, you can,” I say.

“Yes, you can.” says son number one at the same time as me. “JINX!” yell both the kids to me.

I can not be jinxed. I am jinx-proof, just ask my sister,” I say, maturely.

“But mum, you are jinxed!… Oops, I just said your name.”

People do a lot of stupid things in winter. The cold and the never-ending blanket of white makes kids (and some adults) go a little crazy.

A couple of years ago my eldest son came home from school telling me a story about his friend's tongue that kept bleeding and how hilarious and gross it was. Finally, I got the story out of him of what happened to the top layer of his tongue. You guessed it already didn't you? 

Unfortunately, there is a great divide between what parents want for their kids and what kids want. We parents like it when toys have an equal amount of learning potential and play value (ie. the kids play a for long time without our intervention).

Kids like toys that are loud, garish colours and have tiny pieces that we step on in the middle of the night. This leads to a natural tension around the holiday season as we want our kids to be happy but we don't want to be disrupted by their toys. For example, kids love toys that play the same song repeatedly and they especially love it when that song drives mommy and daddy crazy.

The mommies at The Bump feel that these are the worst baby toys to get, and they are pretty close; especially with the ban on stuffed animals. Those things proliferate in our house but luckily our dog performs a sort of natural selection on them to keep the population down.

Sometimes people with no kids ask me what they should get their niece/nephew/godchild. And I always say that if you want the parents to like you buy them something like books or puzzles and if you want the kid to like you and you don't care what the parents think, buy them something from the following list.