Stuffed animals

The theme for Ada's nursery, which we planned to keep the same for all future babies, is animals around the world. I have this really cute painting of a world map (see below) with animals drawn on the places where they are from - there's a bald eagle in the US, a penguin in Antarctica, etc. I also started collecting stuffed animals and planned to put up a shelf of them. I got a llama, a giraffe, and an elephant, plus I already had a few of my own. So this afternoon I went to Kohl's (it was one of the first times I've actually felt like going out in a while) and they had a bunch of cute stuffed animals for $5 each - including a penguin. I love penguins. I went ahead and bought it, but I hope I'm not jinxing anything.

This is not the first time I've seen animals that I wanted to get for the nursery since Ada died, but it's the first time I've actually bought one. It was just too sad before. About 2 weeks after she died, Hunter and I went to Tampa for a day; we really just needed to get out of town. We spent the morning at a place called Big Cat Rescue, which we both loved. The name pretty much says it all, but basically they are a non-profit organization whose mission is to rescue big cats (lions, bobcats, cougars, ocelots, servals, etc.) from being abused by humans or who are orphaned as cubs and cannot survive on their own. It is not a zoo, and their number one priority is to keep the cats happy rather than entertain people. Anyway, after the tour we stopped by the gift shop. They had all kinds of stuffed animals - it made me cry there in the shop. I just couldn't buy one.

For Ada's due date, Hunter and I made a donation to Big Cat. We will get a small plaque on one of the "Cat-A-Tats" (like reallllly giant cages) that will say in memory of Ada. Plus, we also get quite a few passes so we can go back and see it. I'm not sure yet if we'll get to choose which cat gets the plaque (we're still waiting for the paperwork), but that could be interesting to pick one out. I'm thinking maybe the white tiger. As I learned on the tour, white tigers are not a species and they only live in captivity by imbreeding. This causes many defects, early deaths, and stillbirths. That caught my attention.