Elmo fever

My kids love Elmo. They’ve never really seen Sesame Street. They don’t have any Elmo toys (okay, they didn’t have any Elmo toys until this weekend), but they’re both crazy about Elmo. And I don’t know why. 

They know Elmo because he is on their overnight diapers. (We do cloth during the day, but use the extra absorbent overnight disposables at night.) But he isn’t on every diaper; some diapers have Cookie Monster, or Ernie, or Grover or, once in a great while, Big Bird. 

I think it may have started one night when Veronica was particularly overtired, and everything was making her cry, and kick. Putting a diaper on a kicking two-year-old is painful, so I’ll try anything to get her to stop kicking. On this night, she had Cookie Monster on her diaper, so I started singing “C is for Cookie” in my best Cookie Monster voice. The next night she had Elmo on her diaper, so I sang one of Elmo’s songs from our Sesame Street CD. And now it has become a tradition that I sing a song for whichever character appears on each twin’s diaper at bedtime. 

But Elmo is most definitely the favorite. So when we saw a stuffed Elmo at the thrift store my sister-in-law works at yesterday, we had to buy it for the twins — even though we knew they would end up fighting over it. I left it sitting out last night, and when Veronica came down with me in the morning for breakfast, I heard a joyful squeal and then “Elmo!”

After an extended love-fest between Veronica and Elmo, I convinced her to let Elmo eat sitting next to Baby Gabby (who takes all her meals with us, and has her own special bowl that Veronica must give her before every meal). So Ethan helped her find a second special bowl for Elmo, and we were just getting ready to sit down for breakfast when Colin came down. 

“Elmo!” And Colin scooped Elmo up (from his breakfast) to have his own love fest, which of course, really upset Veronica. And as predicted, the fights over Elmo began. At 7:15 in the morning. 

We ended up setting a timer after breakfast so that each kiddo got Elmo for three minutes … until Colin lost interest and went to play with something else. Veronica was generous enough to let Colin take Elmo in his stroller for their morning walk, and since then they’ve actually done pretty well with sharing. But we’ll be in trouble the next time they both are upset: Elmo has become the new go-to baby for comfort. 

I have a feeling we may end up becoming a two-Elmo household. Sigh.