How do you make kids' gift "equal"?

[CAFarmerGirl]

I'm not sure grandparents don't need to work harder at this than parents. Kids are with their parents all the time, and -- if they're not spoiled rotten types -- they understand that their parents do things for them all year long. For example, one year my oldest got her class ring for Christmas. It arrived in November, and she picked it up at school. She didn't whine that her sister had more gifts that year; she understood that she'd had her "big gift" a month earlier.

With grandparents, it's different. Or, usually it is.

I'm remembering that one of my grandmothers was very unequal in her gift giving (and in her love, but that's another story). My father's mother'd give a small gift -- maybe fancy bath soaps. And she'd load my cousins up with expensive toys and complete outfits. Worst of all: She'd take me shopping to try on clothes for my girl cousins, and then she'd buy for them and not for me. Christmas was just one of her ways of punishing us for having a mother of whom she didn't approve.

I would not have allowed a woman like that within 1000 feet of my kids.