Toy Stories

                                                     

I am a big fan of the Toy Story movies. Most parents I know get more then a chuckle from those oh-so-familiar scenes being played out. I am awed by the imagination of young minds. We don't have a whole lot of toys around here, but we have enough. The truth is most of the really good toys (meaning the ones the kids play with for a long time and go back to again and again) are often the simplest ones.

So instead we stick with the basics. Buckets of army men,a sturdy doll house from a friend,a used rocking horse,some giant puzzles and we're all good - Thank you very much!

I have sometimes sighed thinking of the really beautiful toys we just can't keep here. You know the prized dolls some children have, dressed in layers of fine clothing with lace trim and hair that looks like it was styled at the salon.

"When did you get this doll sweet heart?"

a tiny voice replies:

"3 and a half years ago for my birthday from my great Aunt Adelaide."

Meanwhile Mary is back there with a doll that looks like its been homeless for at least a few years , wearing a ripped dress and her hair inexplicably tangled up in a miniature pink plastic brush. The surgery needed to extricate it from her head leaves it looking more like Chuckie then any recognizable toy form. Have you ever tried to get a brush out of a dolls hair? I mean really tried? Its worse then super glue. If you asked Mary when she received her doll she's likely to reply :

"yesterday- gotta problem with that?"

And really I don't.

I'd like to have the time to care for all these lovely things, but I am often too busy putting on band-aids, counting math on my fingers, or peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwiching to do much else. Most days I am trying to redress the wrongs in my house- forget about redressing Barbie.
Let Barbie fend for herself.