Stuffed with crazy

Like anyone who has small children - or even one child for that matter - my house has been over run with stuffed animals, baby dolls and the like. (See, I told you I was going to write about my kids a lot.)

Stuffed animals are a great go-to gift for relatives or friends at birthdays or holidays. They can also mysteriously pop up in your shopping cart during a trip the grocery store when your little one looks up at you with his or her big doe eyes and says "pullll-ease!" How can you say no to that? You can't, well I can't anyway - not a day when they have been exceptionally good or I have been exceptionally grumpy. And at my house there is a about a 50/50 chance of it being one of those days.

Now after three children and three sets of doey eyes looking up at me, our house is littered with stuffed animals of various size and baby dolls (mostly naked) and even some combination of the two. Some end up on the kids' beds, a few special ones have been placed up on shelves or dressers, but the majority are buried in bins I have purchased in an attempt to contain the ever increasing number of stuffed arms, legs, paws, hooves, wings etc.

Every night I spend time picking up these animals and dolls to return them to their home. But unlike the Legos and Hotwheels I carelessly toss into their perspective bins, I can't seem to bring myself to toss the seemly hundred of stuffed toys into bins. I know it sounds crazy, but I can't. It just feels wrong to throw a naked baby doll into a bin and pile a bunch of other toys on top of it.

Does that make me weird? Maybe,but I was weird anyway so I guess this quirk doesn't really tip the scales ...

I also can't bring myself to carry babies around by their legs or heads. It just feels so wrong. Maybe I have some amazing maternal instinct or something ... nah ... just feels creepy. And given the choice between weird and creepy you gotta pick weird right?

Look, I know these babies aren't alive and when I leave the room they aren't going to spring to life like in Toy Story, but ... I don't know, there is still this very small child-like part of me that doesn't want to give up of the sliver of a chance that they might and I don't want any toys talkin' smack about me ...

A few weeks ago I set up a small pup tent in the basement for my kids to play in. Later in the day I went downstairs and was horrified to see, not only the mess that lay in front of me, but a stuffed bear hanging by it's neck from the inside of the tent. Now I am sure that this wasn't meant to be some sort of torture device for the bear, it was an accident. Maybe the knot got too tight and it couldn't be untied by a six-year-old's fingers, but there it was.

I couldn't help myself I rushed over, untied the poor bear from his noose (I am guessing the bear is a he - he was wearing brown) and proceeded to give him a big hug. Then a carried him around for awhile like a baby and laid him down gently before tackling the mess that was my basement. Weird, sure, but don't go crinkling you nose at me - it's not like I gave him mouth-to-mouth of anything (or would that be mouth-to-snout?).

I know treating dolls and stuffed animals this way doesn't really make much difference in the big scheme of things (except to secure the fact that I am a little coo-coo), but it sure makes me feel better. And if there is any way I can ward off being a victim of one of those Chucky dolls, you can bet I'm gonna do it!