Parenting 201 -

Over the past few weeks so 8 year old son has wanted me to fix his stuffed animal "Lion" - she is a well loved baby that he has had since he was in my belly, and of course like any of our childrens babies they grow attached and then we are unable to replace it with a new one.  And not without trying.  Over the years I have stitched her tail, face, paws, back of her head, replaced the music box and I have made her clothes so her body stuffing would not fall out.  But she has gotten to a stage that I can not repair her anymore, even when asked.

So as parents we asked what do we do.  Our guy really loves her and wants to keep her but knows that she is falling apart, we thought up a few things but those ideas just brought up more issues with our over thinker.  So Troy went online and looked up to see if he could find a stuffed lion who was the same.  Remind you I have done this many times over the past few years and no luck for me.  Well he did find one or more like three online and I bid on one and purchased it about a month ago.

Now this is where it all get sticky.  As parents we try our best to be honest with our children, but we fail over and over again, from the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny to the biggy Santa!  We make up little fibs to make things appel to our children more and more, but are we hurting them?  Is it wrong?  I am not so sure it is yet.  I want my children to be children and to use their imaiginations and to be able to tell stories of their childhood and to remember the joy of knowing you knew nothing better then Christmas or Easter morning and how treats were left for you by some strange figure that your parents have never seen.  Still sounds fun to me.

Well here is the story.  We told trevor that there is a place that fixes doll, stuffed animals and bears, cause there is one in in Norwich CT, which is pretty close to us.  This place will take in a stuffed animal and in the same day restore that animal to almost new condition.  The look on his face was both of excitement and of fear.  He wanted to send her but did not want to be without her for just one night, totally understandable.  So we did not talk about it for a few days and he mentioned it to us a few time since.  This past weekend he was really intrested in getting this done, so we told him we would.

Yeasterday morning he tried to catch daddy before he left for work, but missed him by a few minutes.  Then today I was off from work so he had me bring her down to the doll hospital and his lion was "taken care of" and repaired.

Still not sure if we are doing the right thing or not, but tonight we will see.

If you look closely in these two photos you will see that Lion was not too far behind or away from Trevor!