Abby's Toy Habit

I've said million times that I'm just going to start tying dollar bills in knots and give them to Abby to chew up. Why? Because every time I give her a new toy, it's destroyed in less than 5 minutes. Seriously.

So I buy her toys from either the dollar section at Target (LOVE that section...) or the Dollar Store itself. I actually buy her baby toys, because they make them without hard plastic pieces that a baby (or an Abby) could swallow, and they also usually have a squeaker in them. She loves squeakers.

Side note: Abby likes to squeak the toys incessantly as she bounds around the house with them, and if you ignore her, she'll come right up to your face and squeak them louder. Josh gets so annoyed that he'll take the squeaky ones and hide them around the house, so I'll periodically find a plastic hamburger in the bathroom drawer or under a couch cushion. She's really excited when I give it back to her, but I earn no brownie points with my husband.

It's the stuffed toys that she destroys immediately, and she makes sure the fluff goes all over the house in minutes. The rubber squeaky ones last a couple of days because they take longer for her to work at tearing apart. But, once she's destroyed them all, she'll play with the leftover fabric casing for weeks, as if it was a complete toy itself. It's just the funniest thing when people see her running around with what used to be a stuffed dolphin like it's her prized possession.

Here's the process of Abby getting a new toy, documented for you.

A brand new stuffed flip flop from Target with a squeaker inside. Isn't it cute? She knows it's for her.
Time elapsed: 1 minute
She also moves around some when destroying a toy. This time it was probably more because I was chasing her with a camera...
Time elapsed: 4 minutes
"Mom..... why are you interrupting??"
"All done! Aren't you proud of me??"
"Where's my next toy?"
She's the only one of the three puppies that does this to her toys. My parents have her sister Shelby, and whenever we visit they have to put away her cute stuffed hedgehog, soccer ball and army-patterned donut... or else Abby will make them hers in the first half hour.

This is when I ask myself why I waste time and money on buying toys in the first place. I should just wad up a dollar bill, or a five dollar bill in some cases, and let her at it.

But, I also know she the joy she gets from pulling out all the stuffing and making a huge mess in the apartment... so I keep buying them.

It really is pretty entertaining, for us and for her. Well, except for the loud squeaky ones when we're trying to watch TV.

Josh, Kim & Abby