Similar to how there are classic Christmas carols by Frank Sinatra that people have been listening to for decades, there are essential items that we’re pretty sure our moms and grandmas had on their lists, too. These are the classic wish-list items that make up our not-so-grown up Christmas lists.

There was a period of time in our childhoods when we were old enough to start thinking boys were cute, but not old enough to read Tiger Beat and fawn over the shirtless foldouts of Leonardo DiCaprio. During this time, we developed crushes on the characters from our favorite cartoons. Let’s look back on out favorite cartoon cuties from the 90′s.

As we went from children to young adults, a lot of things changed. Most obviously our bodies, inevitably our groups of friends, and strangely enough the compliments we used to receive. Not only did certain girls in our grade who once were nice now became mean, certain things we loved to hear went from nice compliments to mean insults. In 2011, if anyone says any of these phrases to you, don’t hesitate to diss them back.…

As kids, we were constantly being taught right from wrong by our parents. Growing up, we knew that we had to clean up after ourselves, always say “please” and “thank you,” and not to talk to strangers. But how many of these lessons did we forget after elementary school? Somewhere between adolescence and teenagedom we got rid of our childhood lessons in order to make room for Cosmo knowledge.

As a college newbie, it’s easy to get overly excited by the big world of themed parties. Although theme parties are supposed to be fun, they can get very stressful when you “have nothing to wear.” Instead of blowing money fast on expensive Legs Avenue costumes, there are specific items of clothing that can be tailored to any theme.

Whenever I babysit, I can’t help but be surprised by what kids play with these days. They have so many Hannah Montana dolls, Angry Birds figurines, and other “so-right-now” toys that I don’t even recognize. So many of toys from when we were young would be completely unidentifiable to kids these days.

Every year older brings new privileges. The obvious perks are voting, drinking, growing boobs and losing our curfews. However, with these new privileges consequently comes the loss of old privileges. There were many things we took for granted as kids that cause us to look back on our carefree lives and think “I wish I was a kid again.”

When I began my freshman year of college, I was overwhelmed to say the least. I was overwhelmed from meeting so many new people, overwhelmed by how sinfully delicious the late night food scene was, and overwhelmed by the workload. All of the sudden, I was getting numerous weeknight texts from people about amazing parties.

With all the reading we’re assigned in our college course load, it’s hard to remember a time when reading was for fun. As kids, we were given the freedom to chose what book we wanted to write a report on.

Being an adult requires that you stop doing certain practices from your childhood. College requires you to be dependent, so waiting half a semester to bring your laundry home for your mom to wash isn’t going to cut it. The silver lining is we can now vote and (look old enough to) buy alcohol, but it still sucks that we’re too grown up for our moms to make our ponytails, we’re too old to order off the vastly less expensive kid’s menu, and we have too much homework for 9 o’clock to be our bedtime.