A boy and his snake
Oh, seriously, get your mind out of the gutter! Not that snake! Besides, he calls that his junk.
No, no, this is about G-man's stuffed snake, Alice. Recently, thanks to the snake exhibit at the zoo and its proximity to the ladybug on the carousel, G-man is very into snakes. I draw snakes. We look for stickers with snakes. He hisses sometimes. Don't get me wrong, trains are still the main attraction in his life, but snakes are taking up what little time is left for another interest.
Alice is one of several snakes in our house now, but by far the biggest. In order of size, we first have the little ones from a pack o' snakes purchased at the shore. I think there were originally eight, but one never made it home from the boardwalk. These occasionally are seen buried in sand, collecting debris under a chair or simply piled in a bowl somewhere.
Next comes Joey. Joey preceded Alice by about a week and was the "big snake on campus" for that time. He's a long, red rubber snake, lovingly selected from the zoo gift shop and the winner of G-man's endurance test to see what snake he could play with the longest on the floor of said gift shop. In his heyday, Joey took stroller rides, accompanied the G-man on car outings, was fed from a toy bottle and carried around all willy-nilly.
But then Alice arrived. Also from the zoo gift shop, she's plush, at least 6 feet long and red. G-man adores her. He reads stories to her and with her. She helps him do puzzles. Alice sleeps on the rocking chair in his room at night after completing G-man's bedtime routine. They play games together. She's also been on car rides. Alice gets snuggles, pets and is often proclaimed to be "silly." And, as a long, stuffed toy that is dragged around the house, she performs a sort of dusting service for me, too.
Alice is the closest thing we've had so far to a non-train lovey. But fear not for Joey. His ability to curl up into a small footprint earned him the right to come on vacation with us, whereas we didn't think US Airways would go for Alice's presence. (that's right, there were snakes on that plane!) Bandaids stick to Joey better so he gets to wear Cars and Hello Kitty. He and Alice sometimes share the job of doing puzzles or reading books and get to relax together some evenings. Both keep somehow ending up in G-man's mouth. However, Alice alone gets to turn on the sound machine at night. As for the little snakes, well, they didn't get their own names, but are at least known by their colors.
And here's a little secret the G-man doesn't know about yet. There is another red snake, a teeny-tiny squishy snake, in the house. In his school bag! Just waiting for the right moment - or meltdown - to make him or herself known.
