Toy Story

Today my brother, sister in law, and two lovely nephews came to visit me. While we were getting dinner ready, my little nephew crawled around my non-baby-safe apartment doing fun things like knocking videos off the shelf and playing with remote controls, which apparently I have a somewhat extensive collection of. If you know me well, you know that I am stupidly anal and borderline OCD about cleanliness and order, so you may be thinking this was bothersome to me. But you're wrong. I love that little boy much more than tidiness as it turns out (but later I fixed the movies... I can't help it). He also came and grabbed onto my legs to help himself stand up, making it very hard to to anything else but stand there and be enamored with his cuteness, and also try to hold it together through the pain of his grabby little hands and sharp fingernails.

My other nephew was watching Toy Story. He had seen the third Toy Story but neither of it's prequels. He asked me "Is there scary babies or teddy bears?" and I reassured him that there were not. Man, I was freaked out by that stupid baby (if you haven't seen Toy Story 3, you need to. It's fantastic. But there is a freaky baby.) and I'm 24. My nephew is 4 (ok, almost 5). Poor kid.

Toy Story made a lot of sense to me when I was a kid. It wasn't really a crazy idea, like, for example "The Brave Little Toaster". Toasters, vacuum cleaners, lamps... coming to life when the humans are gone? That's ridiculous. But toys, yes, that makes sense.

I definitely thought my toys had feelings when I was a kid. I remember getting very, very upset at my brother for punching my favourite stuffed bear in the face repeatedly, while saying "Look at his face, Jenny! He's still smiling!" I would just stand there yelling at him to stop, crying for my poor bear, who just had to hold it together and put on a brave face while getting smoked in the face time after time. I have that same bear to this day, and yes, he is still smiling. What a trooper.