I'm not ready to share Mazzy's reaction to my return with everyone just yet. (Spoiler alert: NOT GOOD.) But here's a picture of Mazzy with her new toy courtesy of Grammy.
Didn't I warn you all yesterday of Grandma & Grandpa's Master Plan? Now I have concrete evidence.
Anyway, I have stripped her of her Minnie Mouse moniker and renamed her "One More Lesson In Not Abandoning My Child For Two Weeks".
Trust me. There are many.
I have a strict “no cartoon character clothes or toys” rule. All Mickey Mouse or Disney Whinnie the Pooh items we received before my son’s birth mysteriously disappeared.
i’m so not a disney fan. my hubs hates barney too. but the worst, to me, would be dora. i just really can’t stand /any/ALL the dora crap. fortunately my Lovie hasn’t yet seen an episode and i hope to keep it that way for..ever.
LOL! I have the MMCH dvd hidden far, far away. I cannot take another hotdog dance. Thankfully my boys aren’t into stuffed animals.
It’s amazing how many toys get “lost” in the trash can.
I wish I had instituted that rule months ago but I fear it is too late. I got Mazzy the smallest Elmo I could find and that was all she had for awhile. And then someone got her a bigger Elmo and then someone else got her the Tickle Me Elmo. So now we have three fucking Elmos in our house.
Mazzy has never watched Dora. But she sounds horrible. The worst thing I have ever seen in my life was an episode of Blue’s Clues. How did that guy live with himself?
I actually think that the Mickey Mouse show is just as (if not more) annoying than Barney. It’s so bright and the whole Mouseketool thing drives me crazy and Mickey Mouse’s voice is ten octaves too high and it makes me think I might have a seizure.
I think we’d need a full on dumpster to “lose” larger than life Minnie Mouse.
My husband has a strict no character on clothing rule which works just fine for me — what we didn’t realize was that an innocent family movie night would turn into an obsession with Cars that can’t be contained. Who would have ever thought an 18 month old would remember that you need the X-Box remote to turn on the DVD and for that matter that the Cars short movie is actually not the real Cars movie. And I am beginning to believe that his Lightening McQueen and Mater toys are extensions of his hands.
We did this too. Now that he’s 4 he’s got Cars movie toys and Thomas the Train toys and books but I refuse to buy clothing that have these on them.
Damn! Did Grammy feed her miracle grow as well? She grew like 6 inches!
To solve the hideous characters dilemma, you could send Mazzy to a Woldorf school. They don’t allow any media.at.all. Problem solved because they discourage it in the home as well. You could blame the school and dodge that bullet altogether!
I hate all cartoon characters, I wish everything in my house could be made of wood. I am pretty sure Disney is not on the list of places to visit…….ever.
Dora, Winnie the pooh, Thomas the Train, Handy Manny, Barney, and anything Disney is just.not.allowed.ever.
I do think I might find a soft spot for Elmo, not sure why, he is kind of like crack for kids and keeps them out of your hair for a few minutes. God, I wish I had thought of Elmo, brilliant.
I second the Waldorf school, no media at all and they believe when soemthing bad happens that either a gnome or fairy did it. That way you can ommitt yourself from reality completely. I hate Waldorf more than Dora.
Holy crap, it’s a Mazzy-sized Minnie Mouse! And Midget Mickey?
Mazzy had never heard of Elmo until my mother (aka Grammy) bought her an Elmo potty training book when she was just six months old. She was saying Elmo by the end of the day- no joke. And it all snowballed from there.
I thought the same thing when I saw that picture. My mom sent it to me while I was away and I was like— Oh no! She’s become a full blown teenager and it’s not even two weeks yet!
But when I got home, she still looked the same size. I think it might be the outfit.
And that Waldorf school sounds like it would seriously get in the way of my Bachelor Pad habit.
That’s how Mazzy’s nursery was in the beginning. My friend calls them “huppie toys”. It combines “yuppie” and “hipster”. Then Grammy got involved and everything took a turn for the worse.
I like the gnome idea. I’m gonna tell Mazzy it was a gnome that kidnapped me to Argentina. Should solve everything.
That’s Scuba Mickey. It’s waterproof and swims in the bath. It was purchased on the same shopping excursion as Mazzy-sized Minnie. Because what grandparent can stop at just ONE TOY?
I always had a very clear line as to how many cartoons I could put up with and Barney was never allowed. Pretty much all any of my kids got were Pooh bears and Tiggers.
Try not to let Mazzy make you feel bad. Sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do!
I think I’m weird, but I’m OK with the current Elmo obsession for 2 main reasons:
1) It’s not Spongebob or Bratz or anything age inappropriate, language inappropriate, or slutty.
2) I think it’s cute how excited she gets about anything relating to Elmo. It truly makes her face light up and I never get tired of that.
Now the Princess obsession? DREADING THAT. I’ve never been a girly girl, but I was the target age when The Little Mermaid first came out in movie theaters and I WAS pretty obsessed (When it came out on video, I’d cue up my tape and call my friend and we’d “watch” it together from our respective houses). So we’re trying to not buy anything princessy or super-girlish but we recognize that resistance is futile. We just don’t need to encourage it 😛
Jesus Christmas! Does it require it’s own bedroom. I won’t make the obvious “she’s no Minnie” joke. Whoops.
OMG, I ditched all the Dora stuff from my eldest, yet my youngest STILL managed to find out about her and was obsessed half a minute into her first episode. On second thought, I am pretty sure that is what she has been googling when she steals my iPad. Fucking Google! Can’t hide shit.
Too bad the homecoming reaction was not good, but that’s kids for ya. I was gone for 48 hours once, which doesn’t sound long but is an eon when it is never done and the person leaving is the sole caregiver at night … upon my return, my 7.5 year old may have blinked once in my generl direction, and my 18 month old who before I left could be found glued to my hip, said “Oh. Hi Mom” in the tone of greeting the most boring person ever, then ran away. Part of me was pkeased at their independence, part of me was thinking “disloyal little fuckers!” 😉
My sisters are BIG into the cartoon characters and I’m just so NOT. And they always ask me “why don’t you like anything CUTE?”… just because I’m not killing my kid’s brain cells 8 hours a day with TV (and don’t get me wrong, she does watch SOME TV, just not very much) and ridiculously overpaying for crap with Mickey on it, does not mean I don’t like cute stuff. My nephew was in love with Nemo when he was 4 months old. I wish I was exaggerating. He could sit through the entire 2 hour movie when he was 7 or 8 months because he was so used to getting dumped in front of the tv. That is NOT normal! Caitlyn likes MMCH and Fresh Beat Band because she used to watch them at my sister’s house, so I will put those on for her sometimes, but I definitely don’t buy all the crap. My sisters were absolutely DEVASTATED when the FBB concert sold out and they couldn’t get tickets (and shocked that I wasn’t planning to take my daughter). And they and their husbands are dressing up like the FBB for Halloween. God. They are awful.
I can only imagine how she reacted to you coming back, kids do the most unexpected things. My kids used to cry when I picked them up from daycare.
I don’t like Elmo because he does not promote proper speech. Especially for little kids, I think that hearing proper language is important. I like Waldorf, I like the way they follow the seasons in their teaching and I like a lot of their way of thinking. Of course I am (or used to be) at least a little crunchy.
My kids have ruined my crunchiness and if I need to do anything I let the baby watch Barney with her brothers. She LOVES it, I hate it, so I actually get things done
She is so cute with Minnie Mouse. And at least it’s not Barney or Elmo.
I have a strict no character rule when it comes to clothing. But the toys? They’ve taken over my house. Sigh.
Oh god. Doesn’t it suck when you’re all teary-eyed and emotional and expecting some kind of really heartfelt reaction from your children (like a slow-mo freaking Hallmark commercial or at least an ad for pet food or something…anything!) and they barely look up from what they’re doing?
Don’t worry. It happens to the best of us.
(Not me, of course. My kids always miss me terribly. But I’ve HEARD this could happen. From OTHER people.)
Anyway, I missed you.
There.
I’m sure you feel better.
XO
I’ve always wanted a stuff toy as big as me! But that’s hard to find when your over 3 feet…
I’ve always wanted a stuff toy as big as me. But that’s hard to find when you’re over 3 feet…
Minnie’s got nothing on Mazzy in the Cute Department. (Plus Minnie is saccharine, suspiciously perky, and most probably not the sharpest tool in the Disney drawer.)
Welcome home, by the way.
Mazzy looks ridiculously big here, like, grown. Beautiful kid. Apologies for the mice.
Mazzy was purely Sesame Street until Grammy’s Disney infraction.
I have to agree with you about Elmo. (Don’t tell.) He really is less annoying than a lot of the other stuff out there. And the celebrity stuff can be somewhat amusing. And yes, it’s hard to deny her something that makes her so happy. She’s actually got a Cookie Monster and a Big Bird too. I was obsessed with Sesame Street as a kid so it gets a pass.
DREADING the princess stuff too. Today Mazzy told another little girl that she likes her shoes. So that doesn’t bode well for me.
Yes! Her bedroom is our living room so that’s AWESOME!
I wish she just ignored me when I walked in. GIRL WAS PISSED. Maybe I should feel good about that? Obviously she missed me:(
If I ever saw a family of people dressed like the Fresh Beat Band, I think I would run away screaming. I’ve seen it once or twice and it made me want to throw my television out a window. And I really love my television so that is saying something.
My sister says something similar to me— why don’t you want mazzy to play with anything fun? Of course, that was MONTHS ago before our house was inundated with “plastic fantastic”. (Stole that moniker from another commenter.)
You mean because Elmo talks about himself in the third person? Mazzy does that too but I assumed it was a normal part of intellectual development. Do you mean to tell me that is Elmo’s fault?
She did not ignore me. More like she was PISSED AS HELL. Or she just hates me now. One or the other.
Yeah, and I can remember BEGGING the very same woman for large stuffed animals when I was a kid.
What happens to a person chemically when they become a grandparent?
It’s the pink polka dots. It’s impossible to be a cynic in pink polka dots.
I know. It’s the photo. Totally freaked me out when my mom sent it. But now that I’m back, she still looks little.
Totally missed you, totally normal! Like when you are happy your husband is alive after he does something stupid so hugging him, but also hitting him for being stupid. Not that YOUR husband is stupid, just analogy 😉 Toddlers are genuine creatures, pure emotion, they feel hard, they let you know, and they get the emotions easily mixed up as both love and anger are intense. Normal. Missed you. But getting Elmo to visit her in real life may help too. haha.
Monkey doesn’t own anything Disney or other cartoon character related. On that front, I can claim a parenting trophy. That’s right, he doesn’t even have an Elmo. He sleeps with a white tiger from Thailand, whose name in Arabic means something rude (not that we’ll ever tell him that).
I hear bad people kidnap Minnie’s all the time. Just sayin’.