There is a corpse in my trashcan.  It’s not as morbid as it sounds.  Dora the Explorer has finally, sadly been sullied one too many times by our misbegotten Alpha Cat.  He was, most likely, a dog in a previous life, and never quite made the transition.  So Miss Dora, rest her soul, was resigned to the garbage bin in very much the same furtive fashion as one might dispose of the corpse of a neighbors prize poodle.

 

But now, every time I open the lid, I catch a glimpse of two pink fabric feet and I feel a stab of guilt.  Like the man in Poe’s classic “The Telltale Heart” I can almost imagine it asking me to save it.  My daughter has outgrown the nearly lifesize plushy character, but I still would rather have passed her on to another worthy home.  She was simply unsaveable, no amount of washing in various chemicals seemed to take away the foul tang of cat urine.  I just could not, in good conscience, pass the well-loved doll onto another family knowing the foul provenance that came with it.

 

So when the trash-man cometh, I will say a prayer for the plush pink toes and the wide eyed beatific smile of my daughters favorite toy, and hope that, somewhere out there, there is a place for all those happy memories to reside.

Its very strange, having 3 kids. It brings the nature vs nurture issue straight to the fore of your everyday life.

I remember the day each of my kids woke up with new wiring in their head hooked up (if you have kids, you know how this happens, they can go to bed only speaking three words and wake up speaking full sentences).

My littlest one though, he’s hitting these sentience milestones faster than the other two. I don’t know if its simply because he’s trying so hard to stay in step, or because I now, by kid #3, know how much I can safely let him get away with, so he’s just getting so much more exposure than the other two ever did.