Toy Story

Gabriel, my 7 month old, is CRAWLING!  Whenever each of my kids reaches this milestone in their early lives I always have two thoughts:  First, time to clean the carpets (we have 2 dogs, that’s another blog for another day!).  Second, time to abolish the choking hazards.  I scheduled the carpet cleaning and watched my husband move as much furniture as possible onto the non-carpeted areas of the house.  The glider from the nursery found its way to the kids’ bathroom which made brushing teeth an Olympic event.  We dragged the bench from the foot of our bed to our bathroom and then proceeded to stack it with everything from under our bed (bins of winter clothes, wrapping paper, luggage, that old slipper I had searched for last month, etc) until the menacing tower threatened to collapse on us as we sat upon the “throne.”  The living room sofa chairs were stacked upside down on top of the coffee table in the foyer resembling an urban art display, the dining room chairs were lined up in front of the stove in the kitchen (Perfect….an excuse not to cook!), and then he moved the sectional away from the wall in the family room.  OH MY GOODNESS, we could have lived for 2 weeks on the goldfish and popcorn that had been lurking under the couch and we uncovered enough “lost” toys to start a small scale Toys R Us. 

Toys.  My arch nemesis.  Sometimes I hear them laughing at me at night (literally, some of the talking toys randomly go off in the middle of the night scaring the bejesus out of me!)  Every couple of months I get toy fever.  I look around at all the toys everywhere and a hot flash sweeps over me, my heart rate quickens, I start to feel tight around the collar.  It’s like the toys are suffocating me.  I find them in the oddest places:  in my make-up drawer next to my blush, in the silverware drawer, hidden behind the curtains in the dining room.  I end up dumping all the toys in the middle of the living room where I sort through them, returning missing puzzle pieces to their proper places, tossing

 old Happy Meal toys in the garbage, replacing batteries that have rendered many toys useless, etc, etc.  I learned the hard way that this task is best performed AFTER the kids have gone to bed because inevitably they refuse to part with the plastic turtle dressed in a grass skirt that the dogs have chewed the head off. 

Once the carpets had been cleaned, it was time to move the furniture back………..but I loved the look of ALL THAT SPACE, none of it cluttered by toys yet.  I decided in that moment to have a Clean Sweep Party and invited the kids to join me.  Each child had a large Tupperware bin with their own picture on it to put their favorite toys.  Just like on the TLC show, I found a bunch of large cardboard boxes and printed off pictures from Google Images to make it easier for the kids to help me sort.  One box had a picture of a garbage truck and I explained this box was for toys that were broken (or missing their heads).  Another box had a picture of a baby that was choking and this box was for any toy that could potentially lodge itself in Gabe’s throat (think Polly Pockets accessories, marbles, tiny toy soldiers, bouncy balls, etc).  A third box had a picture of a girl who was crying and I explained that this box was for toys that still worked but that they were too old for because some boys and girls were not as fortunate as we were and had no toys to play with.  The kids had a lot of questions about this box.  Who was this girl?  Would she be happy once she got our toys?  Would they be able to give them to her in person?  I guess I hadn’t thought this one out and I skirted around their questions urging them to start sorting through the land-fill sized pile in the middle of the living room.

It was fun at first.  “Uh-oh, Mom, another choking hazard”, Tyler said holding up the top to one of Maddy’s 25 chapsticks.  “Why don’t you put that one in the garbage box, Buddy.”  And so we sorted.  My heart was touched each time one of them put a toy in the “Give-To-The-Sad-Girl Box”.  I was shocked at how generous they were being and slightly sad to see them place some of their once-favorite toys in that box.  This went on for about an hour until the kids lost interest and went running off to play with some of the “new” toys they had discovered in the pile.  When my husband walked in from work, he tried to quickly escape the horror that had become our living room.  Not wanting him to miss out on all the fun I insisted he come help me finish up.  He knelt beside the give-away box and the surprise on his face mirrored the sentiments I had been feeling all afternoon long.  “Tyler wants to give away Robbie the Robot?!”  he exclaimed.  “Why would Maddy put her first baseball bat in the giveaway box?!”  “What are ALL these baby toys doing in here…….oh, well, I guess Gabe isn’t really a baby anymore, huh?”  One by one he rescued the kids’ favorite toys from the give-away box and re-distributed them to their Tupperware tubs of toys to keep. 

And then it hit me.  Number 1:  Next time I get toy fever I will have to wait until my husband is asleep as well.  Number 2:  Maybe the kids were not to blame for the avalanche of toys in our house after all.  Maybe it was our own unwillingness to part with these precious symbols of their childhood because it meant that they were growing up and one step closer to not being dependent on us anymore.  True, when I picture my husband and I in our elder years, hair graying, sipping coffee (probably decaffeinated Sanka or something), sitting on our porch swing (why does every daydream of being old involve a porch swing?) I do NOT see a 50 year old Tyler and 49 year old Madelyn bickering in the background or a 47 year old Gabe trying to steal their toys.  But it is impossible to imagine our house without the sound of their squeaky voices, running feet, and the kind of uninhibited laughter that makes you laugh out loud right along with them.  That is one of the many reasons I started keeping a gratitude journal.  Before I go to bed most nights I take 30 seconds to write down a few things I’m grateful for, or my reflections on the day so that long after the kids have moved out of the house I can look back at the yellowing pages of that journal and remember the days when they were young.  The entry for 10/5/11, the day of the Clean Sweep, says it all:

1)  The kids are growing up                                    

      --Tyler took a shower ALL BY HIMSELF

      --Maddy got dressed ALL BY HERSELF

      --Gabriel crawled FOR THE FIRST TIME

2)  The kids are growing up