Soft Toy Softie!

So today, we passed a load of baby stuff onto my cousin, him indoors is adamant that there will be no more pitter patter of tiny feet in our house and anyway there is only so much stuff you can cram in a loft before the ceiling caves in...

There was a real joy in sorting and tidying and having a nice big pile of stuff waiting in the hall to go off to another little baby. A relief that some of that bulky, brightly coloured plastic infection was finally leaving the building...

I did panic a little once I’d put it all together in one place, (there seemed an awful lot of it) would they have room in their boot? Would they sort through it there and say,

’ Thanks but we already have a copy of Hairy McClary from Donaldson’s Dairy... a pair of frog patterned wellies ... a mass of drinking cups... a packet of safety plugs... numerous building blocks?’

Would all my sorting be in vain as it seeped back into general use?

But no, they appeared grateful for the gear, maybe politeness or maybe it’s true that one mum’s junk is another mum’s treasure!

Earlier in the week I had some difficulty with some of the younger members of the family searching through the stuff and playing with it, things they hadn’t played with for years, things they had definitely forgotten about, things they were happy to pass on to another baby but just wanted one last play with.

That was O.K. it just meant another search under the bed after they had finished and re-collecting the scattered hoard.

Annoyingly, some things disappeared completely like one of the pegs from the hammering bench, argh! But much as it pained me to send it on incomplete I did, knowing that if it turned up I could pass it on but that very probably once baby was mobile the rest would be scattered to the four corners of their new home too!

I was much more surprised to see peeping out of my partner’s wardrobe, freshly laundered, in anticipation of his new home a sheepish looking Iggle Piggle!
‘What’s this doing here?’ I asked.

My partner instantly in defence mode,

‘ You can’t give that away! He loved it!’

‘I know’ I said ‘But he doesn’t play with it now – he’s nearly six and anyway it’s not his long term favourite, I could never get rid of Monkey, Monkey or Ted but that one can go, surely!’

I thought of his bed covered in tumbling teddies and mountains of soft toys. It depressed me.

Iggle Piggle was special, he was taken everywhere for a while. He went with us to Greece when the eldest was a toddler and the youngest was just a hope!

He was thrown up in the air and landed in the sea on a dark, still moon lit night... the eldest was distraught. Tears, tears, tears and real sadness.

One phone call to Nannie and Grandad later (a quick rush out to the local supermarket for them!) and he happily realised Iggle Piggle had managed to swim all the way home to Manchester.

When we arrived home a week later there he was sat on the sofa. (New tags on but no questions asked!)

He did love him...

But I’m not keeping him! If I let him stay I’ll have to let Upsy Daisy and Makka Pakka stay too and I fear I would never see the carpet again... and if that makes me the bad guy then minwah wah wah to the lot of you softies!