Buying your Child's Love

My son came home on Monday with new tennis shoes and a new cell phone, not to mention this is his forth cell phone that his dad has bought him in the last 6 months and my son is 11 years old. I will never understand why his father feels the need to try to buy the newest gidgets and gadgets for our son and why he does not use the money towards buying a house so he can keep himself planted in a house/neighborhood for longer than a year vs. up and moving from this neighborhood to that neighborhood, in and out of school districts. When it comes to buying school supplies or paying dental/medical bills co-pays, prescriptions or any of the necessities he wants no part of it, but he can always afford to buy materialistic things. He has my son convinced that he must have the newest things as soon as they come out, it makes it hard on me when I am constantly trying to teach our son that things do not come to us easy and we need to work for all the extras that we get, and that it is not normal to be a spend thrift or to go out and blow a couple thousand dollars at time on material items. It is like my son is starting to expect me to buy him things just for no reason, and I am constantly telling him "it is not your birthday, it is not Christmas," I tell him to go out and make his own money for any extras. He tries to make me feel bad, like well dad just bought me this... I just cut him off and tell him, that is irrelevant and I am not his dad. I don't feel bad because one of us (his parents) has to be teaching him some responsibility and work ethic. I guess it is going to have to be me...