Toys vs. Treasures

We have a box that comes out every time we have kids in the house and written on the side of the box in large letters is the word "TOYS." This weekend we had the most excellent privilege of having my sister, nephew and niece visit. As my niece dug through the box she busily renamed all the stuffed animals, one penguin will forever be Sunset now, and quickly she separated the toys into what interested her and what didn't. And then she found it and you could almost see the world go into slow motion for a minute.

In the toy box is a Cinderella music box. When you open it you can fold out two mirrors and put Cinderella and her prince on the dance floor, wind the music and then as it plays "So This Is Love" they dance. I helped her set it up and for 20 seconds she was completely mesmerized. Then she looked at me and said, "That's it?" Ha ha, yes that's it.

My sister got laughing and explained that yes, this is how it works something is special but only for about 20 seconds. And so my 5 year old niece carried it back to the box, set it to the side and continued to play with other toys. However as bedtime approached I was presented with the music box.

"Aunt Ellen?"
"Yes?"
"Aunt Ellen, this is not a toy. This is a treasure. Sometimes when people treasure things they give them to younger people that they love. If you feel that you might love me and be ready to give this to me, I could be happy."
"Well okay. Let me think about it."
"Okay, for now I'll just take it to my room so I can have it near."

She then delicately carried it down the hall to her room. We just melted into giggles. How smart is she? An brilliant noggin I tell you. I mean really how do you say no to that? And so my sister advised that if I was asked again and wasn't ready to part with my "treasure" all I had to do was say something very Disney like, "On your 16th birthday at the stroke of midnight if I don't have any daughters, it is all yours."

Ah yes, now I see where the brilliant noggin comes from.

Man Swing

Did you know we've become parents? For part of our journey we spent several weeks in the hospital. One particularly sleepy night Josh was sitting in the wooden rocker and he got expounding on the great wonder that is the process of rocking. Let me remind you, it came out pretty fast and flowing, he was tired and the thoughts were just bubbling out.

"I love to rock. It is so soothing. You know what is the only bad thing about this rocker? It is man propelled. I have to push. Sometimes you can push really hard and get several rocks out of one push, but then, it stops! I always seems to need three more rocks before I'm asleep and so the process starts all over, I wake up, push almost fall asleep then the momentum stops." Here he sighed...

"But man do I love to rock. You know what would be a great invention? If they could figure out how to make man sized swings like they have for babies. I would totally buy one and just swing and swing and swing. Do you know how relaxing that would be? Very. It clearly calms down a crying baby. Imagine what it would do to a grown man. Talk about stress relief. That right there is a million dollar idea, man swing."

Then there were a few minutes of silent rocking and then just for good effect he said one more time...

"Man I love to rock."