Tame - Pixies

i'm going to work myself back up to posting regularly. i would like to introduce you to some of our menagerie here at the house. i am generally entertained by emerson's antics with his animal friends, and am always tempted to buy him new ones, just to see what he'll call them.

for example, this one was on sale at ikea yesterday, and he did not disappoint. meet pirner, the tiger.

i googled 'pirner', and it seems that the lead singer of soul asylum's name is dave pirner. i'll have you know that i have no special love for that band, and don't think dave or i has ever uttered that word.

next, i give you nueve, the (drunken) panda bear. seriously, doesn't this thing look wasted?

and here is mudo the octopus.

and this is garden eel, the manta ray. i have no idea.

element, the elephant.

another recent purchase. this sea turtle is HUGE. freaking enormous. it's hard for him to carry, actually. i love the melissa and doug toys, because they're so realistic. the turtle's name? program.

for christmas, em's great-grandparents gave him a stuffed cave that houses 7 stuffed dinosaurs. the two you see in the foreground are a dilophosaurus and a tyrannosaurus rex. naturally, the carnivores are his favorites. the t. rex is named rexie, which is fairly normal and predictable. the dilophosaurus, however, is named different. no, i mean his name is different. wait. he calls him different. oh, forget it.

i will tell you the measure of my child's love for rexie and different. when he's being a little difficult, i generally will take away something that he likes to play with for a period of time until he can calm down and stop whatever he's doing. normally, this goes rather smoothly. the other day, though, i threatened to take rexie and different, and he stopped COLD and looked at me and said, "no, you CAN'T take them. I LOVE THEM." and he really does. they must go to bed with him every night and must dance to certain songs and must play together and all that. it's fairly sweet, even when they are killing and eating the herbivores together.

last, but certainly not least, i have to throw in a photo of my kid with one of his friends. i am including a photo of him since i'm rather thrilled that he didn't make his weird scrunchy "say cheese" face in this one. he is holding his friend, seat the pig.

i have to say that my stuffed animal naming was pretty boring. my animals were named things like lambie and duckie. i think this naming trend was passed along from my brother. you may recall a post from a while back in which i tell you he had a mark twain doll he named octomont. do your kids come up with bizarre names for their toys? if you're child-free, did you do it when you were a kid?