Soft and Cuddly, I like you!

I loved to play with stuffed animals when I was little. I had, as they would say in Arabic, tens and tens of them. They each had their own name and story. Even now I could probably go through and give each toy's history--who gave it to me, its name, and why it is in the condition it is in. Sometimes, when I look back at my memories, I wonder if I wasn't slightly autistic or perhaps very OCD as a child. Every night before going to bed, and periodically throughout the day, I would arrange all my stuffed animals on my bed, by size, age, relationship...

Most of my stuffed animals are still at my parents' house, but I did take a few with me when I moved out. Andrew took all two of his stuffed animals (an ewok and a monkey) and we've since combined our few toys with Rachel's and this makes up our current stuffed animal collection. We keep a few in her crib, a few on the bookshelf, and all the others in a basket in her room.

She likes to go in there and tip the basket over and play, which I don't mind at all since it keeps her entertained, is easy to clean up, and is relatively safe.

I'm playing, mom, go away...
Whose eyes should I poke next?

When she got bored of playing with herself she crawled out of her room to find me. I picked her up and took her back to her bedroom so that we could clean up--I did too thorough of a job.

Never mind, don't go, mom!

She wasn't too thrilled that I put her away with the toys and promptly knocked the basket over so that she could crawl out. This started another play session.


Rachel is such a curious baby. Sometime between being placed in the basket and crawling out of it she found a stick that had fallen off the wicker basket. I don't know if she broke it off of the or just found it loose already, but she decided it was her new best friend. I tried taking it away several times, but she would move her hand away before I could grab it while yelling at me. I eventually decided that it was not a battle I wanted to fight so I settled on making sure she didn't choke herself.

Me likes the stick!

Yum, yum!

Finally the stick became so banal that she discarded it to focus her efforts on poking all the pretty sequins on the frog.


This, too, was soon cast aside in favor of the baby bunny that I got in my Easter basket one year during a visit to Aunt Tami's. After every animal had been adequately prodded, abused, and sucked on we cleaned up again and Rachel was so exhausted from all of her playing that she was ready for a nap so she climbed up on my lap and gave me a big hug. I love it when she does that!