Family

Today, Teagan came for a visit (yay!) and being such a grown up little girl, has expanded her movie watching from simply Winnie-the-Pooh and the extras from Happy Feet, to include The Muppets Take Manhattan, The Aristocats, The Jungle Book, and Veggie-Tales Christmas. (Finding Nemo was too traumatizing: she kept calling out more & more frantically for Nemo and, since his dad doesn't find him til nearly the end of the movie, we decided to turn it off and look at Auntie M's seashell collections instead!)

When Teagan watches a movie, she really gets into it~she likes to snuggle with Pooh and Eeyore when she's watching them. Someone playing in a band? Out come her instruments. Today, we were watching The Jungle Book...one of my favorites!

So I pulled out a stuffed animal she hadn't seen since she was really little (like crawling) and re-introduced it to her, along with an animal that is always in her toy basket but often ignored: a mama and baby monkey:

She loved them...but: "Mommy and baby...no daddy..."

So Gramma went upstairs to get a very special stuffed monkey:

While this monkey may look just like the other monkey, it is special because it was purchased for my nephew who never got to play with it. It has been tucked away in a special place in Gramma's room but she had been talking about getting it out for Teag and Dante to play with. (I'm glad she did: unused toys are so sad).

Teagan was thrilled: "A mommy!...A daddy!...A baby!...A whole Family!!!"

Yes...a whole family. Think about it: this is an amazing concept for a child who is 2.2 years old. She spent the rest of the afternoon with her family...

They snuggled together

They learned about Italy together

They looked at themselves on the computer...

Family...

...such a joy!

I think her cousin would be pleased to see how much happiness his stuffed animal brought to her.