The Ugly Furry Truth

It starts simple enough.

You see a soft, furry bear sitting on a lonely shelf at a posh store. Or you receive the cutest little stuffed green frog at your baby shower. Your mind instantly goes to the perfect spot in your very clean nursery. You smile and pat your belly, longing for the day that your little cherub with clutch the furry thing with chubby fingers.

So you go home and place the animal or animals in the perfect spot. Right by the crisply folded matching receiving blankets and the stack of newly Dreft washed onsies. You let out a sigh and can hardly contain the excitement of the love that will fill this room.

Then the cherub arrives and so do more stuffed animals. These usually are sporting little bear T-shirts that say "Its a boy!" or "I'm with the little sister!" You place these animals in the little clear laundry basket on wheels that they cart the babies around in and smile. By the time you leave the birthing place of your choice, you need an entire flatbed for the flowers, balloons and of course the stuffed ones.

You panic a little when you get home because you are having a hard time placing all the said stuffed ones in the perfectly arranged nursery. You manage to find some room and you go to snuggle with your little.

Flash forward a couple of years. Now you see a picture of a mom who will kill you and bury you in the backyard of you bring a stuffed animal in her home.

I am going to tell you new moms something that no one was kind enough to tell me in my pregnant splendor.

Stuffed Animals get together and reproduce when the lights go out.

It happens slowly. So slowly you barely notice at first. Little Johnny sees a bright purple and green snake at the fair that he begs his daddy to win for him. Little Susie sees a stuffed bear....in a cheer leading outfit.

Before you know it you are knee deep in stuffed things and you want to rip their stuffing out of them. You start to curse the stuffing givers and vow to get your revenge when they have their own bundles of joy.

I believe it may be a conspiracy of some sort. To drive us mamas crazy. (Especially those tight on space.)

Can you tell that I have been on a cleaning and organizing kick? I have to admit that I have been channeling the wrath of fur into big bags labeled. "Donation". I tell myself that some little child out there really needs a stuff animal because he doesn't have one.

I'm a giver like that.