I railed a while back, when I was getting ready for A’s birthday about the $15 chihuahua Webkinz and how ridiculous it was to spend money on a freaking stuffed animal with a WEBSITE.   A’s grandma got her a non-Webkinz, normal chihuahua stuffed animal and A was extremely pleased and delighted.

Then… I don’t know what came over me.  Some kind of little dog madness. Some kind of big-girl adoration. Some kind of sudden loss of rational judgment, as if gravity had suddenly stopped working but we were walking on suction cups through the toy store. I was in this cutsey toy store with just C, who had just completed her last day of first grade.

I was feeling so proud of her, and pleased to get a little time with just her. She loves getting that level of intense attention. We had lunch together (I insisted on doing this first) at a little cafe and then headed for the toy store.  I was planning on spending $5 or less on just some very small token that would be a little reward for her after such a great school year.

We mulled over the options. She looked at every stuffed animal in the place, and then looked again. There were few choices in the (oh-so-cheap) price range that I wanted to limit us to. She was trying to decide, ultimately, between a rubber snake and a kind of light up bouncy ball.  Looking at these things, she saw fun toys: but I saw trash, junk and more junk… frivolous stuff that I would have to clean up off the floor. Annoying clutter.

We were up at the counter, where the cash register and clerk were.  They keep the Webkinz behind the counter, like condoms or cigarettes at a drugstore.  Apparently so fervent is the craze for these beasts that this is a necessary security precaution. Suddenly I just saw the damn chihuahua.  It was sitting there just looking at me, staring me down.

Without any will of my own, I heard myself saying to the clerk, Can you please let me see the Chihuahua? I knew I was sunk as soon as the damn thing crossed the counter line.  Suddenly it seemed like such a good idea. Get the cute chihuahua – don’t get some dumb snake or another light up bouncy ball.

C was extremely delighted, and we walked out of there, proud pet owner and slightly mystified mom.

It was several days before we got around to actually logging into the Webkinz website, and discovering a virtual world which is now teaching C all about e-commerce. First thing this morning, she was going on and on about how she wants to get on the computer and “buy” Sparky some striped pajamas. By spending time on the website playing games, you can earn Webkinz Cash and then this money can be spent in various parlors, etc. You have to buy your pet food, and take it for walks, and visit exercise and chat rooms.

It’s fairly interactive — You can try to have conversations with other pets but you can’t type in what you want to say, you just have to use the canned conversations using the menu. This keeps kids from saying inappropriate stuff, so it’s not entirely a bad idea, it is just rather inane.

We decided to set limits on how much time she can spend in Webkinz world.  Somewhat arbitrarily, I decided that a half hour per day was the limit.