Stuffed Animals

One of Stian's favorite things remains his stuffed animals. He has tons of them, and he loves to play with them. They all have names and he talks to them, and they talk back. He sleeps with about 30 of them in his bed with him every night. This is what his bed looked like this morning, with the exception of Claire the cat, one of his favorites, who had to ride with him in the car on the way to school this morning. I have no idea how he sleeps with so many of them in there with him, but he insists that he needs them.



Here are a couple pictures of him playing with them.

Here he is having a party with a bunch of them:



And here he is being a cowboy riding his new horse stuffed animal, Tuggy:



He gets very attached to them and feels for them. When we were visiting my parents over the holidays he was playing with some stuffed animals that my parents have at their house. He saw an old teddy bear sitting up on the top bunk and wanted to play with it. But I knew the teddy bear was hard and not that squishy and nice like the others he was playing with (it used to sit in an antique high chair in the corner of the eating area in our kitchen in Rochester). So I told him we'd leave that one be and play with the others. He got all teary eyed and said "But Mommy, that one is so sad and lonely!" So of course I let him play with it! I didn't care, I just didn't think it'd be as nice as the others. But he liked playing with it and talking with it. Then the other night we were reading one of his books, it's about garbage trucks, and in one of the pictures of the trash to be thrown away he saw a teddy bear, and he got all upset and said "I don't want them to throw away a teddy bear!" I had to reassure him that it was probably just a mistake and that the teddy bear would be taken out of the trash. He does understand that they are just toys, but at the same time he can't help but attribute feelings and emotions to them.