Yeah, yeah, it’s been a while. Long enough that I bet you wouldn’t recognize my kids if you passed them on the street. Proof:
Emily is almost 14; Isaac just turned 4; Jacob will be 10 in July. *eek*
I shared the photo on Facebook with the comment, “Three kids, three Guys. I’m giving serious consideration to keeping them…definitely the Guys, they’re quiet and well-behaved. The kids are increasingly well-trained and occasionally well-behaved, but never, ever quiet.” A friend immediately replied, “What ARE they? Tribbles?” I started to respond there, but realized I has written far too much for a simple Facebook comment, and I might as well use this old blog thing I have laying around over here. So…
Are which Tribbles? The kids, or the Guys?
Actually, I’m relatively pleased to be able to say I don’t know what Tribbles are (Star Trek reference, maybe??). I understand that by admitting this, the University of Facebook will rush in to properly educate me on the topic.
No, each kid has received approximately a billion stuffed animals over their lifetimes, and only one ends up being The Guy.
Emily’s is Larry Monkey. He was an impulse purchase due to good behavior during a mammoth K-Mart trip right after we bought our first house, and it took a few weeks for us to realize that Emily had attached more firmly to Larry than any of her other critters. (She named him. We have never known anyone named Larry, so I guess this is a situation where he whispered his name and she heard and understood.) So we went back to K-Mart, in hopes of picking up a backup Larry or two. Turns out, sometime shortly after we walked out with Larry, K-Mart cleared their shelves of all Larries and similar simians. I believe they also burned down the factory and killed all the workers, because we’ve never seen anything even remotely similar… but now she’s almost 14, so I’m reasonably confident of her ability to hang onto him.
Jacob has Black the Dog. He was purchased when we moved in 2011 and he was moved into the top bunk… apparently Black has the ability to attain lightning-fast speed and catch a falling boy in the middle of the night. (Don’t even try to tell me you never told your kids stuff like that. Jacob was never a good sleeper, so if that’s what it took to get him to Go To Sleep, amen.)
Isaac has Frank Moose. He’s a new addition… for a long time, it was Wilbur (named because he was a white bear…you say “white bear” several times, in toddlerese…voila! Wilbur!) but Wilbur is really small and Isaac is… not small. We were at IKEA a few weeks ago, and I bribed promised Isaac a toy of his choosing if he made it through the upstairs maze without meltdown. Which he did, and he lasered through the toy options and grabbed up this moose as though they were magnetically connected. Aww, cute, we thought, and fully expected Moose to end up shoved under the bed with the other dozen forgotten critters already down there… but, no. They have bonded. Again, no idea where the name came from, but Isaac was very clear and very consistent from the start that his name was Frank Moose. OK, then. Don’t question the Moose.
I’m delighted for them that they have Guys. I’m thrilled that they have that immediate security, something to shield them from the occasional Closet Monster, sibling infestation or early-morning sunlight. I’m happy that they can arrange their Guys to support their heads at the perfect angle for sleeping, at home or away.
And I’m ecstatic that the kids allow – even encourage – their Guys to take regular trips through the laundry.
So, there. A blog post, after a year of silence, and a pile of cute kids. What more could you ask for… except maybe more frequent posting? I’m trying, honest. We’ll see.
One More Thing 
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