Saint Elmo's lament

An ancient story was revived recently about my daughter's language. I say only in my defense that we have a Potty Language Belongs in the Potty rule in our house. I'm not telling you that story today.

Recently, Lisa told us on her personal blog that Sarah received Tickle Me Elmo from Jeremiah's mom.

Kate schools Elmo while Lola and Sarah look on in terror

We received Limbo Elmo as a Hanukkah present when Lauren was about 15 months old. I can't say that one Elmo is cooler or more annoying than the other, they all seem about the same. I imagine in the context of factory production, I would probably throw a rope around my own red plushy neck if I got the Chicken Dance Elmo assignment, but that's just me.

Like all great toys for the toddler set, Limbo Elmo comes with a stick.

Elmo dances to his own version of "Limbo Rock", which includes the disturbing phrase, "How low can Elmo go?!"

Lauren had the stomach flu when she was 17 months old, 2 days before we went to visit my mother-in-law in Hawaii. She vomited pretty much hourly and everything. Back then we lived in an apartment with the laundry in the basement of the building, so we changed the sheets and had to bag them for later laundering since it was against the building rules to do a load of laundry after 11 PM. So one of us was holding Lauren, trying to get her to take tiny sips of Pedialyte, and the other was frantically changing sheets. When we ran out of sheets, we placed towels over the mattress pad. In the first bout of sick, Lauren had thrown up on Elmo. Since he's an electronic toy, you can essentially only spot clean him, and last night's mac and cheese smelled pungently sour enough to deter me from that idea. I chucked Elmo in the garbage in the kitchen.

At 4 AM, I was rocking Lauren in the rocking chair. She was almost asleep, wearing only a diaper with a blanket wrapped around her. It was then I heard a small muffled voice from the trash.

"Help me!"

Every horror movie involving a doll or stuffed animal flashed into my head, my brain too tired to process them. I placed sleeping Lauren in her crib, and walked into the kitchen.

"Elmo fall down. Please pick Elmo up!" His little red hands reached up at me.

I'm not dreaming this. It's a talking doll.

"Please help Elmo!" he pleaded.

"Elmo, I can't. You're just too dirty." I said sadly. "I can't fix you."

I heard Lauren stir. I went into the bedroom and woke Alec. "Sorry, babe. It's your turn. I was talking to a stuffed animal in the garbage."

"Alright." Alec said.

I fell asleep, hearing Alec talking to Lauren and the rocking chair on the wood floors.