Holding onto 5 years old

One of the fabulous things about being a parent you don’t realize until you’re a parent. Sure you can talk about love, responsibility, someone to mow the yard in 10 years, future generations and such. But for us, it’s akin to describing why you like chocolate to someone without any taste buds. As our oldest turned 6 years old we noticed the way that he was dealing with getting older, even at his tender age.

Children have toys. Sometimes they have too many toys. The toys that are no longer challenging or simply meant for a younger age are toys that get under our feet, jam up bedrooms and the like that children never, ever want to part with.

Some of the toys we’ve cleared out (under cover of night mind you) left us with a lump in our throat. There was the children’s tool set wit work bench, their first barn and others that made their way into the back of our car on the way to the donation center. They left our house still in great condition on the path to their own private Toy Story with younger boys or girls that would love them as much as we did.

Jake obviously knew his birthday was coming up and we had apparently said out loud once too often that it was time to clear out some of the baby toys. It might have been because of that we’ve seen resurgence in his engagement of long lost toys, some of them anyway.

The animals-all of the animals have come storming out of his storage bins. It’s his own farm animal and dinosaur diorama being played out all over his room. They’re in on his bookshelf, protecting Hop on Pop, The Monster’s Monster, Tiny Hamster and various National Geographic Kids books. In his (future) computer area they’ve run amuck, scampering over coloring books, comic books and pushing the crayons to the back space.  It would be easily explainable to say it was Dinovember, but all of this was his doing.

His big boy alarm clock is even being guarded by a Brachiosaurus, possibly not the best choice for guard duty given their preference for plants. The Hot Wheels are even put on guard by a Transformer making sure they don’t make their way to Sunnyside Daycare. For the record, all of the Hot Wheels, dinosaurs, Sandra Boynton, Patrick McDonnell and National Geographic books are safe and will be handed down.

In reality he has no reason to fear. In addition to the classic books there some toys that will be stored in our attic in a box, next to our vintage collection of children’s shampoo bottles and Star Wars glasses from Hardees. A big box of plastic animals, including all of the dinosaurs will be up there too.

It started with the Red Man. A plastic figure in a convertible toy we purchased at a yard sale. The Red Man drove his way straight to our son’s heart and was the first toy that he loved. He cried when he lost it, causing the house to be cleaned from top down, only to find the Red Man under a book shelf; covered in multi-colored pet fur, grinning at the humans who had just searched all over for him.

The brown horse also brought tears. He was more advanced in his hiding, so much so that we had to order another brown horse from eBay. Just the horse was ordered, not an entire set of farm animals, just a brown horse.  During the absence caused by the shipping we told Jake that we’d find him, distracted him with shiny objects, Thomas the Train and desperately cleaned the house.

The brown horses arrived in the mail. Just to be prudent we ordered two of them in case one of them got happy feet. Shortly after they arrived the memo must have been received by the original brown horse because he made his presence known, under the book shelf, covered in multi-colored pet fur, grinning at the humans who couldn’t find him in the most obvious hiding spot.

Our son’s sudden interest in his small plastic menagerie again was his attempt at holding onto his childhood. The fact that he just didn’t want to share his toys is a possibility, but we’re feeling nostalgic and prefer to think that our oldest wants to remain in that silly, fun period of life where every day is a great one and the biggest worry are certain kids not playing with him during recess.

Rest easy plastic dinosaurs, as well as, a couple of the farm animals, you’ll see him and his son in 25 years probably.