I guess I adopted?

When we were on vacation near Mesquite in November, McKenzie won a prize at the Fiesta Fun Center in St. George:

She carried that spiky balloon thing around everywhere, and insisted on sleeping with it each night. When we were getting ready to leave the condo, she started crying and asking for her 'brudder'. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what she was talking about. After tears and questioning and unsuccessful distractions, we finally figured out she was missing the purple squishy and referred to him as 'her brother'. Where she came up with it, I have no idea.

At first I thought it was just a funny phase that she would quickly forget. But, each night since then, she has refused to sleep without brother. He goes everywhere with us. He was eventually popped, and is now limp, and his eyes have worn off. He's also missing a bunch of spikes.

Since it's a huge sob fest when brother goes missing, I've tried to keep my eyes open for an emergency replacement... but to no avail. However, when we went to Chuck E. Cheese last week, my parents and brother earned enough tickets to get her two more related creatures:

She loves them, too, and has bestowed them nicknames as well: Big brother, little brother (the original brother) and blue spiky brother. Now all three must be in bed with her at night - which isn't terribly easy since big brother is quite large and tends to roll. The entire house is aware when he rolls out of bed, thanks to McKenzie's squealing alarm. At times I resent the brothers because they seem to create a lot of frustration when they get up, run away, and hide, but every time I see them they make me smile at the kooky, creative imagination of my little monster.