Tommy and Tallulah

Last year, during her dog obsession, which continues through this year, Tallulah received a few stuffed animal dogs for her birthday and Christmas. Most of them had a spot on one of their eyes. She named her favorites, Tommy, Snoopy, and Strawberry. She played with them off and on and when it was time to combine the girls' room, she, of course, needed them, along with about 10 other stuffed animals on her bed.

Shortly thereafter, she noticed that tommy had a small-ish, brown-ish stain on his underside. This presenteda problem because this is a child who won't use a napkin with a stain, who tells on her sister when she is looking for socks and dumps the sock bin on the floor "and now my room all messy." This is a child who is somewhat anal retentive. You can decide if that needs a hyphen or not.

She announced that tommy had poop on him and she didn't want him on her bed. Actually, she didn't want him in her room. But, I made her feel bad about it and told her it was not poop, it was probably chocolate. "Okay mama, it not poop, it just chocolate, but he sleep on de flu-owa now." This has continued and almost become a game for me --when I make her bed, I put tommy on it, and always hear this indignant bellow later in the day, "who put tommy on my bed???"

She is unhappy with Miss C_____ who has come every other week to help us clean our house since my acl tear, and of course, now hyphen is in love with her and we can't let her go. Grrr. She tries to tell her not to put tommy on her bed, thankfully, miss C______ doesn't understand this impudence, and I don't translate.

But she couldn't quite get rid of him altogether. Annabelle told her, "you are mean to tommy, if you won't love him, he can be mine, I will take care of him." No, she decided to be abusive rather loving and letting go. So we were back to our old game, her trying every which way to not have him anywhere near her stuff. Did I mention that this is my child that actually throws away her starburst wrappers, rather than keeping them for "my candy wrapper collection."

Today, however, we had a breakthrough. "If tommy mine, then I can do whatever I want with him, and I want to give him to Annabelle." She said it defiantly, like I was trying to force their relationship, which in a way I was. Now he lives on Annabelle's nightstand, next to her bucket of rocks.

Cue odd couple music now.