I was still in your belly when I knew them...

Ryan is completely fascinated and amused by his stuffed dogs.  He has about 10 of them, most are beanie babies that were Conor's once upon a time, and one slightly larger Chihuahua (ironic that the largest one is a Chihuahua, but such is the "logic" of stuffed animals!).  Chihuahua is clearly the alpha dog, and also clearly Ryan's favourite.  Ryan has imagined personalities for all of his dogs, and on a daily basis he negotiates disputes between them for various offences. "Mom, Rufus just bit Sniffer's leg!", "Mom, Herder isn't being nice to the other dogs!", "Mom, I think Chihuahua doesn't like Tuffy any more!" are all examples just from this morning.  He sleeps with all of the dogs except one, a different one each night that he hands to me as I say good night... "Mom, Fitz want to sleep with you tonight".  This has been going on for more than a month now, and the dogs don't seem to be losing any of their allure yet.  In fact, they are such good playmates that I have had to do quite a few surgeries lately with needle and thread.

Along with his fascination with stuffed dogs, Ryan has also been talking about Dodger and Shadow quite a bit.  We have pictures of them in the house (including a portrait painted by Aunt Judy!) and even though they died before Ryan was born, he knows exactly who they were and even talks about their personalities.  He knows that Dodger was really smart, and that he was a great friend of mine.  He knows that Greg had a particular fondness for Shadow, who was always silly and sweet.  He talks about them like he knew them, and every so often he asks whether or not he did know them.  This morning he asked me that, and when I reminded him again that they died before he was born he asked to see their pictures on the computer.  We looked up all of the old pictures of them, most of them pre-dating even Conor, and poured over them, cooing every so often "they are soooo cute!" and "aren't they just too, too sweet?" After we had done this for a while Ryan asked me if I missed them, to which I replied that yes, I still do, and that I probably always will.  That's the way it is with a good friend who you can't be with any more.  Ryan thought about that for a while and said "I miss them too" and before I had a chance to remind him yet again that he never really knew them he added "even though I was still in your belly when I knew them."

Not much I could say to that, and really he does seem to know them, if only from the stories and pictures he has seen throughout his life.

 Ryan got all of the dogs together for a photo shoot... 

And one with our real dog, Ninja!

Ryan took these two pictures, sort of the A team (Regal and Chihuahua) and the others.