Turtle Family

My son has never before exhibited a great fondness for stuffed toys. Gifts of the fluffy kind simply serve as displays on exhibit at his bedroom, to be glanced over from time to time, maybe even patted or held briefly on a few occasions, but never really seriously considered as major objects of affection.

I was thus more than mildly surprised when, on a recent trip to the department store, my toddler gravitated towards the toy section and excitedly grabbed a stuffed turtle from one of the shelves.

It was Crush (...or was it his son Squirt? I honestly can't tell the difference...) from "Finding Nemo." His big eyes lit up with pleasure as he held the toy next to him. He even brought the cute and cuddly green thing next to his face and gave it a kiss on the cheek.

From that moment on, he absolutely refused to let go of Crush/Squirt. The cashier had to resort to cutting the price tag off for scanning because my son adamantly refused to hand over his precious find lest it disappear from him forever.

I was hugely amused to see how much he loved his new toy.


As soon as we arrived back at our condo, my litte boy suddenly looked for his real pet turtle, which he received a few months back as a present from his Uncle. He asked his Daddy to take it out of the aquarium and set it down on the floor. When the live turtle was on the floor, our three year-old got his stuffed pet Crush/Squirt and put him down beside it. A few seconds later, my husband and I were flabbergasted to see our son plop down on the floor as well.

Before we could say anything, our wonder kid looked up at us with a big grin on his impish face and said: "Look, we're the same! All turtles....we're family!"

And so that is how we found ourselves with a happy family of turtles living at our home.