Talking to Toys

This morning, we did a little rearranging of furniture and ended up putting a bookcase and a bunch of books back into Celeste's room. Last year, we had to move the bookcase out of her room because the books were too big of a distraction for her at naptime/bedtime. We're giving it another go now that she's about 90% stopped napping — if nothing else, having a steady supply of books in her room may make quiet time more palatable even if she doesn't nap.

Of course, more than just books are ending up on the bookcase. Celeste was referring to it as Poodle's house and having one of her stuffed dogs play on it, and she had her pink purse, which is full of Little People dogs, on it.

After reading to Celeste, I went to try to get Quinn to sleep. While rocking her, I heard a loud scream from Celeste's room. I put Quinn down (much crying on Quinn's part at this point) to make sure Celeste was all right. It turns out her favorite stuffed animal, Ripley, wanted to play with pink purse ... and when she opened it a sea lion was in with all the dogs. Thus the scream. When I got into her room, most of the Little People dogs were in the bed with Celeste and her stuffed dogs, but the sea lion had been thrown to the floor.

I picked up the sea lion and got Celeste to put all the other dogs back in her pink purse, and I started to move pink purse from the room. Celeste insisted that Ripley wanted to play with pink purse, so I tried talking to Ripley: "Ripley, Celeste needs to get to sleep, so do you mind if I move pink purse and you can play with it later?"

Celeste is sitting in bed looking at me like I've lost my mind at this point. "Daddy, Ripley is a toy dog."