The Toys Are Taking Over

As I was driving to work today, being serenaded at every red light and bump in the road by the polyphonic sounds of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven being played, 16 notes at a time, by an electronic piano toy lodged somewhere in my car, I realized that even though my daughter is only seven months old, her toys are already making their move to overrun my life.

And the toys are winning.

You wouldn't think that a seven-month old would have the ability to spread her toys all over every room of our house, two cars, and the houses of our friends and parents, especially since she isn't very mobile yet. But somehow she does, and her toys end up in the most surprising places.

The other night, as I was getting into bed, I nearly jumped out of my skin as my feet rubbed up against something furry (and clearly not my wife's legs) at the bottom of my bed. After jumping out bed and pulling the sheets back I found my daughter's stuffed Elmo looking back at me with a grin.

I had never been scared by a Muppet before.

When my wife and I originally bought our home, we thought that it would make for a great starter home. It was a little small, but had the space that we needed for ourselves and a little one. What we didn't take into consideration when buying our home was that our daughter would need at least as much square footage for her toys as we would need for the rest of our living space.

Since we didn't plan for toy space at the time, we now have to learn to live in peace with the army of toys which are slowly replacing our carpet as the floor covering of choice in our house.

One way that I have learned to make peace with the toys (and keep them out of my sight occasionally) is to have "camouflaged" toy boxes hidden in strategic places around our house.

Besides the (rarely used) toy box in my daughter's room, there is a wooden footlocker in our living room, which had previously housed high school yearbooks and other memorabilia, that has become the "summer home" for toys that decided to vacation in the living room.

In our bedroom, a bottom drawer which used to contain a number "personal" items, from days before children, has become a resting place for toys that sneak into the bedroom in the morning while my daughter watches my wife and I get ready for work.

In the kitchen, toys that are used to entertain my daughter in her highchair, while my wife and I prepare food for the three of us, are chained (via "links", a great toy accessory) to a kitchen chair, which keeps them from cluttering our dining room table, as well as keeping them safe from falling to the floor as my daughter plays "Pick It Up, Daddy!"

My car, on the other hand, has already seemingly lost the war. Once a toy hits the floor of the backseat they tend to stay there until they become wedged somewhere they aren't supposed to be and need to be removed, usually identified by the aforementioned polyphonic music playing over and over again.

I am already painfully aware that as my daughter gets older, that the toys will become more advanced as well as bigger in both size and numbers, and like my impending grey hairs, all I can do from now until then is constant damage control.

For now, I just keep holding on to the hope that one day the battle will be over and my wife and I will have prevailed. Until that day I will do my best to find more hiding places for toys and eventually start "abducting" unloved toys in the night, to start making room for their replacements.

So Elmo better be on his guard and stay the hell out of my bed.