The Monkey Moratorium

I'm calling an official Monkey Moratorium for the Vail house. We can handle no more. i.e., Mike and I can't handle anymore. The monkeys I'm referring too are the stuffed kind. Not Eloise the Monkey so don't worry.  Of the stuffed kind, we now have 4 and Eloise can go no where without all of them. The situation is way out of control.

Here's a day in the life with 4 stuffed monkeys, and I'm not embellishing this for blog purposes.  Eloise woke up today at 6:30am. Sigh. I tried to squeak another 30 minutes out of her but she wasn't going for it. She continued her whining and crying - which over the baby monitor chiming in your ear while you're trying to get just a few more Zzzzzzs is like chinese water torture - and so I went and got her.  What did I find when I opened the door with my usual "Good morning Monkey-girl" greeting?  I found the Monkey standing up, leaning against the rails clutching (I'm not kidding) 4 stuffed monkeys, all while crying. Lord. Goooooooood morning.

So I get her out of the crib and over to the changing table - still clutching 4 monkeys and still crying and this time reciting over and over, "down, down, down" - meaning, she wants to go downstairs. We eventually do make it downstairs where she has a complete meltdown. I have no idea what got into her this morning but it took her a good 30 minutes to really work it out.  Crying on and off, dragging 4 monkeys around this place while I'm trying to hold her and one second she lets me and the next she doesn't.

Fast forward to nap time. We can't go upstairs at 8:50am (ever) without all 4 monkeys. So the search is on. We finally gather all of them and upstairs we go. Meanwhile, I can barely carry her anywhere when there are 4 monkeys jammed between my face and hers. I always read her stories before she goes to sleep. Where are the 4 monkeys you ask? Sitting on either side of us. I tried to drop them off in the crib before we read stories but she freaks out. So the 4 monkeys come with us and sit perched in the chair as if they are honestly listening.

When she gets up from her nap we typically go running. Today was the same. And as you can guess, all 4 monkeys had to come with us. So jammed into the stroller is Eloise with a sock monkey on one side, another monkey on the other, the monkey lovey in her hand, thumb in her mouth and a baby sock monkey on her lap. And I'm not kidding, she held on to those little guys for the entire time we were out there.

Back home for lunch - monkeys in the high chair with her. Then another nap - see monkey nap detail above. Then we head out to go to 2 stores - monkeys come with us and thankfully I had a chance to distract her long enough to hide 3 of them so we only go into the stores with 1. Home we go for dinner - monkeys in the high chair. Bath time - she throws down a major fit because monkeys can't go into the water with her. We get out of the bath and she's screaming "Mimi, mimi, mimi" like a broken, loud record until I can get her into her diaper and pjs and back downstairs where we find Mimi, who was right next to Noni, Noni's baby and Nana. Yes, one of the monkeys had a baby. The sock monkey named Noni. (Mike couldn't resist the baby sock monkey from Walgreens when picking up his prescription. It is pretty cute (and hard to resist at the time) but now we both know better - NO MORE MONKEYS.)

Then before bed we watch 20 minutes of Cars with Eloise on my lap and yes, you guessed it, she had all 4 monkeys on her lap.  Up to bed we go.....me carrying her sandwiching 4 monkeys. All of us read stories together and then she and I strategically placed all 4 exactly where she wanted them for "night night."

I'm tired. Chasing around monkeys all day is exhausting. And listening to her whine because she doesn't have all 4 every waking second of every day is exhausting. Yes, she's cute. Her fixation with monkeys (which we created. kill me. ) is cute but we're done. Please, no more monkeys. We've pledged to stop buying them and we beg that you do to. The Monkey Moratorium. It's official. It's in place. We're all going to live by it.

And a few pics. Here she is riding her bike with the monkeys - not sure how only 3 made it for this ride but I'll introduce them all to you in case you already don't know who is who. From left to right  - Nana, Mimi and Noni. Noni's baby is a mini-me to the sock monkey.