Friday, September 12, 2008

elmo


i have found that hand-me-downs are one of the biggest blessings in life. tristan's cousin johnny is now at the age where he enjoys giving tristan clothes that are too small for him or toys that he no longer plays with. one of the toys that we received months ago was an elmo toy that did the hokey pokey when you pressed his hand. at first, tristan didn't like him too much, so we put him away in the closet. a few months later we took elmo out again and found that tristan absolutely ADORED him, carrying him around by his plastic eyeballs and signing "more" to anyone close by before he figured out how to get elmo to sing all by himself.


unfortunately, since elmo had been played with by 2 cousins already, his batteries began to die and, with them, elmo's voice began to slow down in the most creepy way. his voice got lower and slower until it sounded positively horrendous, causing tristan to let go of his plastic eyeballs in disgust. i couldn't find the correct batteries to replace them with at the time, so i stuffed elmo away in one of the kitchen cabinets until i got around to "fixing him" (which, of course, i haven't found the time to do yet!)


even though his singing elmo toy ended up giving him the creeps, tristan soon learned to recognize elmo on tv. every day before his nap, i fix tristan a snack while he sits on the couch and watches a little bit of sesame street. today we arrived home a little later than usual, so i quickly turned the tv on promising tristan that he'd get to watch elmo while i got his snack ready. i had just finished cutting his sandwich into squares when i heard a loud howling cry come from the living room. thinking that he must have hurt himself, i rushed to him, held him tight and began searching his body for blood or bruises. when i couldn't find anything visibly wrong, i asked tristan "what happened?" he pointed to the tv, sobbing as if his heart was breaking. there on the screen were the sesame street characters saying their final farewells before the commercials came on.


i should have known. tristan hates goodbyes. josh and i have started saying "adios" to one another when we leave because the moment one of us utters the word "bye" tristan bursts into tears. perhaps i should write the makers of sesame street, asking them to have the characters say "au revoir" instead? a little bit of bilingualism couldn't hurt!

4 comments:

Lovella ♥ said...

Heidi, you always crack me up. . truly. . if you ever need to make an extra buck. . (this is frugal friday) consider writing for money. . you have the ability to take something that is common and turn it into a humorous. . and very easily imaginable scene.

M.R. Tumnus said...

Heidi, just the fun reading I needed to go with my mini chocolate bar (ok, bars) here. Remember when dad accidentally said bye bye to you as he left with Master T. for a walk? Wrong words. But he's so cute. (well, dad and T. both are)

Thirsty said...

too funny Heidi! And I agree with Lovella you should try writing for cash:)
I love hand me downs too. In fact anything free is great. One of my friends gives me all of her sons old clothes and toys, so I think altogether I've only bought him maybe three or four items of clothing. Pretty sweet:)

Unknown said...

Very funny, I can just imagine the creepy Elmo. haha