Vince and his Pets

Vince has never been the kind of kid that liked stuffed animal he always liked his blankets.  He has two that he loves and a couple he can substitute in if they are dirty.  His two favorites are camouflage and polkadot, but he used to not be able to say camouflage and so now the blanket is called toulaflage.  When he was a baby he had a stuffed horse but he really just liked chewing on the tail and he only liked it for 3 weeks at the most.  When he was about 20 months old he had a stuffed Elmo doll  that he took everywhere and really loved....for about 3 weeks.  We have a whole laundry basket full of stuffed animals the kids don't care about.  I was actually considering just packing them away or even giving them away.  Then a few weeks ago Vince started playing with them.  He calls them all his "pets."  His talks to them, has them talk to each other and makes up a conversation (my favorite) and likes to line them all up (usually on the couch).  There are a lot of pets and it takes awhile to line them all up.

Vince's current favorite pets are the ducks, the dinosaur, an alligator and a frog.  The dinosaur's name is "Pet the Dinosaur."  The frog's name is "Dump truck AC Stewart."  The alligator and ducks don't really have names right now, at least not that I can recall.  When Vince names things 85% of the time they have a first name and then it is followed by AC Stewart.  We have no idea what AC stands for or where it comes from and I have a feeling we will never know.

Vince likes to take his dinosaur places with him and point out the scenery along the way.  The problem is I don't know when he is talk to the dinosaur or me.  The other night he was pointing out Uncle John's house to Pet the Dinosaur and explaining to him that Uncle John was getting ready for bed because it was dark out.  Never mind that it was 6:30 at night.

Vincent and his pets and blankets.  Looks like dinosaur was still in bed upstairs.

 The other day he was playing with his two ducks.  I asked if the bigger one was the mommy and the little one was the baby.  I was quickly told "NO!" and that the bigger one was the grandma and the little one was a big kid.  He went on to ignore me and have a conversation between the ducks, changing his voice slightly for each one.  The conversation went like this:

Big Kid "Grandma I miss you so much when you go to horse shows.  Why do you have to go to horse shows all the time?  I really miss you when you are gone."

I can't remember what the Grandma duck said because I was too busy laughing and trying to read a book to Joel.  My mother in law shows horses and was gone quite a bit this summer and fall but hasn't gone to a horse show in over a month.  Apparently it made quite the impression on Vince when she was gone so much at horse shows.  Who knew! 

I am waiting for Joel to jump in and start playing with the pets too, but he doesn't seem to have any interest except to throw them off the couch when they are all lined up and make his brother mad.