Should Lily get a Nano for graduation from elementary school?

Dave wonders if we should just give her the iPod that he doesn’t use (my old one, four+ years old and now discontinued), or show her how to use the MP3 player she already has (I’m not sure what that is but it was free from work).

Here are my arguments in favor:

--She gets a lot of hand-me-down stuff already.

--This would be a reward for a job well done. This has been a tough year for Lily socially, and she also really struggled with math this year. Two weeks into school we were seriously considering yanking her right then and putting her in a different school. We had parent/teacher conferences this week and her homeroom teacher said it's like she's a different kid than this fall. Both teachers said she has grown up a lot this year, and things don't seem to bother her nearly like they used to. And after six months of math tutoring her teacher is putting her into the advanced group because she's so good at math; after a lot of hard work, she's really turned the math around too.

--It’s her last year at Bement, which has been a mixed experience, but mostly positive.

--At last, after two and a half years, she seems to be on the other side of the move; she’s much more settled socially and doesn’t talk about how much she misses Brooklyn any more. Last night we were talking about lunch and she said, "I wish we hadn't moved!" My heart sank. "I really miss talking to Kes," she continued. Oh! Her school switches lunch tables every couple of weeks, and that's the move she was referring to. She hasn't talked about missing Brooklyn for six months, at least.

--She’s really excited about middle school. Gosh, she's grown up a lot this year! Her new haircut makes her look so much older, not to mention the fact that she's now five feet and growing, and is maturing physically as well. She's going into sixth grade in the fall and she's almost 11 years old. This feels like a really big transition year.

--I told her she could pierce her ears this summer and she wants to but is still too scared of the pain.

--She's really into music. She is playing a mean flute these days, her teacher is really impressed, and she has only had lessons since January. She's also going to take piano these summer and see how she likes that. She's learned to sing this year, in two different choruses. She had a voice solo in one and has a flute solo in the other. She's in band. All her music teachers say she's really musical.

--I feel somewhat guilty for being a Luddite. We have computers and WiFi and all, but we don't have cable and we never get around much to taking her to movies or other hip stuff like that. So she doesn't always get her friends' conversation, like when it's about American Idol, say, or that dancing one. I don't care if she doesn't watch the Red Sox or can't remember if the Celtics are hockey or basketball. And she really wants to use her money and buy a Nintendo DS, and I think we're going to let her.

--She can really show it off. She'll get a lot of brief attention if she brings it in on one of the last days of school.

--The Nanos are wicked cool! These new ones are fun and they come in fabulous colors! She'll love it. She'll have a great time loading songs and playing it and showing it off. And we can now give her iTunes gift certificates as a present.

So I want to honor all that with a new, fancy iPod. Too much? Do it anyway?