(An earlier version of this post originally appeared on Work It Mom / Milk and Cookies; I’m in the gradual and painstaking process of moving a number of them to this site.)

The biggest gift-giving challenge of my parenting years: buying gifts for Rob, the year he was 11-almost-12. [This has since been matched by 12-almost-13, 13-almost-14, and now 14-almost-15.] It took me a month to come up with even the paltry pitiful assortment of possibilities you see below, but a paltry pitiful assortment is better than no assortment at all.

(photo from Amazon.com)

1. Hexbug Nano. My 11-year-old and 9-year-old boys were so excited about this, they joined forces and saved their money to buy the habitat set, despite me saying desperately, “Wait! Wait! Don’t you want to wait until after Christmas to spend your money?” There’s a battle set I think they would have liked even better if they’d known about it, and if you want to spend more like $40 (the other two sets I mentioned are around $25) there’s the 3D Elevation Habitat Set. [The Hexbug sets are intermittently popular at our house: just as I’m concluding no one plays with them anymore, the kids get them out again.]

(photo from Amazon.com)

2. Rubik’s puzzles. Rob likes difficult puzzles like the 4×4 and the 360. William (age 9) prefers the easier Twist. They both love the Magic. If you try the harder puzzles, may I also suggest getting a book to help solve them? One of our funniest moments last Christmas was when Rob opened the 5×5 Rubik’s, tried to solve it, said, “I’d need a BOOK to solve this one!”—and then his next gift was the book. This year we got him this kerazy one (it says it’s a Square One, but a reviewer says it’s a Square Two)—it’s not a Rubik’s, but it’s similar.

(photo from Amazon.com)

3. MP3. This is the main gift we got Rob this year: the 4GB SanDisk Sansa Clip, and a $15 Amazon MP3 gift card (that link brings you to all the gift cards; the green one is the one that says MP3 on it, though it can still be used for anything on Amazon). [Follow-up from three years later: we were a little worried about getting a second-string brand, but it held up beautifully. It had one apparent malfunction, which we solved easily with the troubleshooting section of the website—I think it just had to be reset or something like that. We finally replaced it this year, only after its SECOND trip through the washing machine. I had Rob try my iShuffle but he didn’t like it at all: my iShuffle doesn’t have a display, but the SanDisk does.]

(photo from Amazon.com)

4. Phineas and Ferb stuff. This show is SUCH a hit at our house: the kids think it’s hilarious, but SO DO WE. Unusual. We considered a DVD, a Christmas DVD, a transforming Perry toy, a joke book (heaven help us), wall stickers, the soundtrack….but we went with the MP3 player instead, and got the joke book as a stocking stuffer. (We got the transforming Perry toy for William.) I think I might get the soundtrack for the car sometime. [I did, and got a second one too, and we liked both a lot.]

(photo from Amazon.com)

5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid. These are a hybrid of “book” and “comic book.” Rob and William have both been on the library waiting list for the newest one (Hard Luck), so I got it for them for Christmas. [Edward is gettng the Do-It-Yourself Wimpy Kid book this year—that would make a good gift paired with one of the novels. (Also, notice that boys do not keep DIARIES, heavens no. It is a do-it-yourself! Like a home improvement project!)]

(photo from Amazon.com)

6. Perhaps it is not on every 11-year-old boy’s wish list, but I think this crochet book is going to be one of Rob’s favorite presents this year. [He did like it, but I don’t think he did much with it. He likes free-form crochet better.]