toy talk

He's asleep now, sprawled out in a spread eagle position on the bed, one hand on Frog. He sleeps with Frog every night. Frog is a fuchsia, orange, and blue-green stuffed frog with big beady eyes that came in a box of discarded clothes from his girl cousins. I am a girl-clothes forwarding depot, having 3 nieces and one pseudo-niece (Chloe), and Frog was in with one batch. Dennis likes to sleep with Frog at night or hold him when he's upset. He feels this way about Snoopy, too, but Snoopy is on sabbatical right now. Snoopy and Ice Bat are off on some jaunt currently, and we hope they'll resurface soon. Ice Bat is my favorite of his toys. Ice Bat is an Ugly Doll (uglydolls.com) and was the first toy I purchased for Dennis (well before he was even conceived). Snoopy is even more special, having been purchased by Gran YEARS before Dennis was conceived. I grew up with a Snoopy myself, so she bought one for my future child when she found one like mine. If you haven't seen the uglydolls, check out the website. I'd like one of each of them, and, interestingly enough, one of my parenting magazines featured a room with a shelf full of uglydolls. Ice Bat made an appearance in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, though not as big a role as Sock Monkey. Dennis doesn't own a sock monkey, but we both had them as kids.

He's never shown a serious attachment to only one toy. He's happy as long as he has a soft one to cuddle at night. He has a furry black sheep and a small lamb from Ireland, and they get cuddled, too. He has a bear that his Grandma made that has been a favorite lately. Bear got a sip of milk from Dennis's cup one night. I worried that Frog was a one of a kind toy (meaning I have no idea where to get another one), and that if we lost him it would be tragic, but he does fine with any of the other toys. Snoopy has nice limbs that fit easily into baby hands. Ice Bat is kind of absorbent. They all have their good features.

I am looking forward to spending the weekend with Dennis. If the weather holds, he might have a swingset by next week (we have 'inherited' a rather large one from our neighbors that moved, and we just have to move it over here). A sandbox and baby pool are soon to follow, and I plan to have lots of quality outside play time with him. We just bought that nice screen house for camping, and it would make a nice screened area for his pool and sandbox--a mosquito free zone, if you will.

My luck ran out this morning--Dennis usually manages to do his poopy diapers when Daddy is the changer on hand. I picked him up to say goodbye to him this morning, and David alerted me to the fact that he needed changing (my nose is stuffy, AGAIN, so I couldn't tell), and I still had 10 minutes til time to leave. It was one of the lesser poopy diapers, though, and David was rewarded with 3 more during the course of the day.

He was a little sad and a little grumpy today when he woke up from his nap, but he cheered up when his Gran came to spend the evening with him. They were both cheered up, good medicine for each other after a tough day. I feel a little like I missed out, but a call to Ellen restored my good spirits after my tough day. Good friends are like gold. I hope Dennis and Chloe will become good friends as well, since we like their parents so much, but we'll have to let them decide. At any rate, he'll have a friend that he's known since her birth 10 weeks after his. That's pretty special. They are so different from each other that they balance out well, and they already light up when they see each other. I was showing off their picture at work tonight, saying she's his best friend, and my coworkers laughed, wondering "do babies have friends?". I think they do. Everyone needs a friend, even a couple of one year olds.