Writing -- Baby Talk: Invasion

The following article featured in a weekly column on parenting in the Women on Wednesday supplement of The Evening Echo, one of Ireland's leading regional daily newspapers. It appeared in the 29 September 2004 issue.

I spotted it as I jumped into the car this morning, just within the periphery of my vision… something familiar but at the same time strangely disquieting. At first I couldn't make out what it was but closer inspection revealed that it was part of a leg sticking out from under the driver's seat. It was nothing sinister… just one of the girls' dolls that had been kicked under the seat and abandoned.

Finding toys in unusual places is nothing new, but there's something about a toy that's human-shaped that makes spotting the occasional wayward limb or being confronted by an unexpected stare a bit unsettling. Deep down you know that it's only a lump of plastic, but before your conscious mind can kick in to provide that information your subconscious reacts on a much more basic level.

Every now and then I notice vacant, glassy doll-eyes glaring at me from behind the furniture or eyeballing me in the rear-view mirror from the back seat of the car. When I go to sit in my favourite armchair of an evening chances are that there will be a host of dolls there before me. There seems to be no safe haven… even the bathroom has been infiltrated!

This invasion happened gradually… almost without us noticing. One or two dolls arrived on the twins' second birthday - presents from well-intentioned friends and relatives. These were followed by a few more at Christmas and then the floodgates opened. Infestation is a word that springs to mind. I'd swear they were breeding - except that there isn't an "Action Man" or a "Ken" in sight!

Dolls come with the territory when you have girls of course, but nobody warns you about just how many of the things you have to live with. Sharing a house with four living, breathing females is fine… if a little cramped at times - but cohabiting with a gazillion plastic parodies is an altogether different prospect. There's something about dolls that I find vaguely disturbing. I'm not really comfortable with them. Perhaps it's the perpetually inane grin that most of them are stuck with, or the disquieting icy stare that seems to follow you around the room.

The worst ones are those dolls with the eyes that open and close when you tilt them. Somehow the girls' have acquired an uncanny knack for jamming one eye open wider than it was ever meant to be, while the other one is stuck half closed. It lends a tortured, demented expression to what should be an innocent child's toy. It's enough to make the stoutest hearted adult cringe. Perhaps scary is too strong a word… but then you haven't seen the state of some of these dolls!

With the twins' birthday only a few months away and with Christmas hot on its heels there's bound to be an influx of new recruits to swell the ranks of their doll legions. But what can I do? I daren't throw away any of their existing collection: the girls have names for all of them, and work on a sort of rota system to decide which dolls sleep with them at night. Sooner or later they'll notice if anyone goes missing from their little clan. Throwing a doll into recycling would equate to murder in their eyes, and I just don't think I'm ready to deal with that degree of angst… at least not yet!