At Home vs. At the Zoo

Top 5 Reasons I'd Rather Live at the Zoo:

5. At the Zoo, the animals stay IN their enclosures.
At my home, the baby (who cannot even crawl yet!) pulls herself up on the crib rails, ready to vault over the side at any moment. This is the same crib that her big sister "graduated" from at age 2... only because I found her in mid-escape one day, hanging precariously over the side.

4. At the Zoo, the keepers lock the animals up at night and go home. To sleep.
Sleep! Glorious sleep! What I wouldn't give for one night of uninterrupted sleep!

3. At the Zoo, people pay good money to come see the animals.
Last time I checked, I had to pay someone else $12 an hour to come to my place and watch the two little people.

2. At the Zoo, you throw the food to the animals and they gladly eat it up.
Yesterday, I had baby oatmeal spit back at me. On my shirt. And face. My older daughter recently cried when I made her a PB&J because she wanted a liverwurst sandwich. Wha-huh?

And the Number One reason I'd rather live at the Zoo....

1. At the Zoo, they have churros.
I love those things!
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This post inspired by the Parent Bloggers Network and the launch of iKnow Animals, Letters & Sounds
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She Got Cabbage Fever

I was a child of the 80s. The question is not, "Did you have a Cabbage Patch doll?" It is, "How many Cabbage Patch dolls did you have?"

Oh, lots. Lots and lots.

I remember when they first came out and I thought, "Ew. Who would want one of those fat-head, chubby-cheeked, butt-ugly little dolls?" (Yeah, I had a third-grade potty mouth. Jealous?)

Within weeks, I was begging for them. All of them. ANY of them.

My mom said, "Why couldn't you have asked for one a couple of weeks ago? When the shelves were full of them? Now that you want one, they are impossible to get!"

She tried. And we couldn't get one.

So I did what any self-respecting, potty-mouthed, future-blog-writing third-grader would do: I wrote the manufacturer a letter. I think it was Coleco (yes, thank you, Wikipedia). I told them how much trouble I was having finding a Cabbage Patch doll and that it would be oh so lovely of them if they would just go ahead and send me one. The redhead. With the blue eyes.

Yeah, that didn't happen.

Eventually, the stores got them back in stock. And I got more than my share of those dolls. My classmates and I brought so many to school that Ms. Starkey had to make a "doll daycare" for us to leave them in, lest they take over the building.

Now that I'm a mom, my girls are still too young to beg for the latest hot toy. But I know what I'll give them when they do: paper and a pen. Or a twenty-year old collection of pre-owned, fat-head, chubby-cheeked, butt-ugly little dolls.

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This post inspired by the Parent Bloggers Network Blog Blast and the Hasbro Toy Event.