College Fund? No. Therapy Fund.

I don't suppose it will come as any great surprise that I am not the world's most diligent house keeper. My shelves are dusty, my bathroom is...well, let's not even discuss it...and my floors are more often than not littered with Turtle's various and assorted toys. I also don't suppose it will come as any great surprise that, having come from a family in which my mother is perfectly content to take a bath in front of me while my dad walks past me with Mr. Happy flying freely, I'm a little short on modesty, myself. Add these two things together and what do you get? You get a house in which Turtle can often be found carrying, playing with, or otherwise getting exploring things that maybe he shouldn't have his hands on.

When he would surprise me in the kitchen, waving tampons around like swords, that was one thing. But the day he attacked me with one of my sex toys? Well....that was a little more awkward. And the day he walked into the closet while I was doing laundry and put one of said sex toys in his mouth? Well, I'm slightly embarrassed to say that my first thought was not, "Oh dear GOD, I hope that's clean!" No, my first thought was, "Where the HELL is my CAMERA???"

In any case, since those episodes, I have tried to be a little more responsible about putting those kinds of things away. Not that I that I'M particularly embarrassed or disturbed that Turtle always manages to find these things and play with them. I just don't want to end up being responsible for his therapy bills later. But then I got this in the mail:



We all remember Ducky, right? Well, Ducky doesn't have a permanent home yet, so he spends most of his time sitting on my bedside table. Turtle has noticed him sitting there and has often pointed to him and said "Guck!" in a very excited manner. But since we're not usually in the bedroom for too long, Turtle gets easily distracted by something else and we move on with our day. I should have known that wouldn't last.

Yesterday, I was in the bedroom doing laundry and sorting Turtle's old clothes. Turtle wanted to watch "Buzz," so I set him up on the bed and put "Toy Story 2" in the dvd player. He sat down for a moment and then got up and traipsed across the bed. He started jumping up and down, which is certainly not unusual for him. But then he started pointing and yelling "Guck!" I groaned inwardly, but asked him, "Do you want to play with the duck?" The answer was a resounding yes. Knowing that Turtle doesn't quite know how to activate Ducky yet, I figured there wasn't any harm in letting him play with it for a little while, so I passed it over and got back to the business of folding clothes.

Turtle went back to his place on the bed and started settling in. When five minutes had gone by and he was still squirming and moving around, I looked up to figure out what was causing the ants in his pants. Turns out, Turtle was tucking himself and Ducky into bed, but since Ducky is smaller than he is, he was having a bit of trouble getting the sheet to cover Ducky up just right. It would either cover him up just right, but cover Ducky up too much. Or it would cover Ducky up just right but not cover him enough. It was quite a dilemma for a boy who tends a little too much towards the OCD side of life. I wanted to tell him, "Buddy, if you knew where Ducky has been, you would know that he's had bigger problems than the sheet covering his beak," but I think his therapy bills are going to be bad enough as it is.