Monkey! WHAT have you DONE?!?!?!

WARNING: I'm just gonna' tell you right now - this is NOT for the weak of stomach. And you should definitely not be eating while reading this blog. So, if you're sitting there, having a little snack, or eating your breakfast or lunch in front of your computer and just checking out some blogs for fun, this is not the blog to check out today.

Okay, now that you have been fairly warned - let us proceed.

When our kids reach a certain age, we take them to a store with stuffed animals and let them loose. They roam the store and make a selection. This then becomes their animal for life. The reason we let them do this is because we've found (just in our personal experimentations) that our kids are drawn towards the animal which best represents their personality and then we can study that animal and find out how best to deal with our kids. I never thought of this idea with John, therefore he does not have an animal attachment.

With Sylvie-Faye, she chose a cat. I thought "She's only 1 year old. She can't possibly know what she wants." I took the cat away and put it back. We tried for the next 10-15 minutes to get her interested in something else, but to no avail. She wanted that cat and to this day, has not let go of it. That cat is her constant companion. The cat no longer looks like the beautiful ball of fluff in the picture above. It's been with her for 1 1/2 years and it's pretty mangy because those two do EVERYTHING together.

We've noticed that Sylvie is like a cat. She loves to cuddle up and cozy her face into your neck and purr, but other times she wants to be left alone and keep to herself. And if she's trying to get somewhere or do something and you try and stop her, she hisses and scratches and puts up a terrible fight. Also, she loves fish and milk, hates baths and will only let you groom her when she's in the mood for it.

Next came Chloe. Sometime around her first birthday we took her to the Phoenix Zoo. As I'm sure you know, they have vendors all over that place with stuffed animals of all kinds for sale. We took Chloe around the zoo and introduced her to nearly every stuffed animal they had. She made her selection and, once again, we tried to take it away from her and get her interested in something else, but she always went back to that particular animal. It's what she wanted and to this day she has not let go of it. It has become her constant companion.....and her partner in crime.

And this is where our horrific tale begins.

This week, the girls have had to stay home with me. Their caregiver has had Strep throat visiting and then my girls became ill themselves, so we all had to stay home together.

One late morning, I put Chloe down for her nap...with her monkey...as usual. But this was no ordinary day.

All was still. All was quiet. And this lasted a good two hours.

Suddenly I heard talking, very soft, gentle cooing, some faint little squeals. But no crying. No "Mommeeeee", which is usually what she says when she's awake and ready to get out of bed. I let her play a while, but then I decided she needed to get up, so I slowly opened the door and peeked in. The smell just about knocked me back out into the hallway.

I opened the door completely and walked in, squinting at the floor beside her crib. The girls' room is always an absolute disaster, so it's hard to tell what things are sometimes. As I crept closer, I realized....

There were little turds all over the carpet. "OH MY GOSH! That is DISGUSTING!" I cried. "Chloe! What did you do? Why is there poop on your floor?"

I jumped up and looked in on her in the crib. Her hands, hair, nails, bed, walls were covered in poop. The smell was unbearable. She could see that I was upset, so she jumped up, ran to the corner of her crib farthest from me and hid her face.

"Did you do this, Chloe?" I exclaimed. Now you're probably thinking, "Duh. Of course she did it. Why would you even ask her that?"

That's when she peeked out from the corner and pointed her long, skinny finger at the real culprit.

MONKEY!! As you can see from this picture, the evidence is blatantly obvious. Monkey has been caught at the scene of the crime...checking out his handiwork.

Bad, Bad Monkey! Monkey had to go away for a while (okay, just to the washing machine with all of the other bedding covered in feces). Chloe went into a temporary state of depression without her sidekick, but monkey soon returned - clean and fresh and ready to get into more trouble.

Oh, and by the way - Chloe loves to eat bananas, she has long skinny arms and legs, which she wraps around your body when you hold her, and her favorite pastime seems to be jumping up and down on beds and screeching....like a monkey.