The Glassy Eyed Menace

Stuffed animals are the great equalizer around here. My kids with their different interests and ages all like stuffed animals and they all have very complex and well developed scenarios involving these stuffed animals. They make movies with them while I'm gone and they have free access to the camera. Ever since Tabor visited and taught Braeden his rope tricks, Braeden and Mark have been making nooses and hanging their stuffed animals over the stair landing. The stuffed animals provide entertainment for Emma in her darkened room at night and are partially responsible for her insomnia. Webkins keep joining the family at alarming rates. Somehow the animals keeps multiplying and multiplying around here under our very noses.

It all came to a head the other day when the children gathered all the stuffed animals for a wedding. There was no floor space available in Emma's bedroom. They had created an "aisle" for the bride to walk up but the rest of the floor was covered with stuffed animals.

Seeing them en masse like that was unsettling and a little nauseating. When did this happen that we got SO many stuffed animals.

I had to do something.

So today I had them bring them all to the family room. We counted the stuffed animals out of my curiosity.

We had 157.

Looking from one brown eyed child to the next I knew that the task ahead of me was going to be next to impossible.

We HAVE to get rid of some, I said. We. Have. To.

There were the favorites from babyhood. The sacred that I knew we could never part with. Braeden's bear Shell, Emma's totemic cat Sally, Mark's Baby Jaguar. Then there were the "family members". There are ways that the stuffed animals are all related and my nutty children alone know the reasons why. Then there were the animals that were also souvenirs, the gifts from family members, the sentimental favorites.

Hopeless.

I finally convinced them to part with 29. 29! I feel like that is an amazing victory.

As Braeden said though as he was lugging 128 stuffed animals back up the stairs, "You may have won zee battle, but you have not won zee war."

I know that only too well.