It's the Little Things In Life...

My youngest has always had a fascination with things that are little. It started at an early age with his toes. When he was about a year maybe younger, he would rip off his shoes and socks and spend 15-20 minutes at a time just studying his little bitty toes like they were the most fascinating thing on the planet.

He went through a toothbrush stage too -- I know those aren't "little" so to speak, but he would have three or four toothbrushes at any given time and carry them with him everywhere. Since then we've gone through a marble phase, a penny phase (now he likes any and all coins) and a small Lego phase. He also went through a "tokens from the board games" phase where he always wanted to hold the tokens from our board games and carry them around. I know I'm forgetting something. But let me introduce you to our latest phase.

It's the miniature flocked animal phase. Mostly teddy bears, but we also have some horses and bunnies. Look at this obnoxious collection.

At just twenty-two or twenty-five cents a piece, it's hard to say no when he asks for one. And originally, this collection was half his, half his sister's. But somehow, he has managed to talk her out of almost all of her collection and he carries these things in a "purse" or lunchbox everywhere we go.


At last count we had about 30 bears, eight or ten ponies and about six or eight bunnies. We also have some plastic bears that go along with a counting book we bought at Target. (Evil money-sucking Target...I can always find something to buy at Target....)

I figure at $.25 a piece Nick's "collection" is still a lot cheaper than the Littlest Pets my daughter thinks she can never have enough of -- and my oldest son's first choice of something to "have" is a video game. I can buy quite a few miniature bears for the cost of one video game!

(I guess it is also much cheaper than my scrapbooking hobby too...hmmmm.....)

And then, as just another justification to myself that it's okay to have such a ridiculous amount of mini flocked bears....surely Nicholas is learning the life lesson that it's the "little" things that matter -- right? :)

I am FINALLY feeling much better today and want to thank all of you for your well wishes. It means a lot -- I appreciate you all so very much!

Have a great week!!!