To Past Jess: What to Know About That September 24th Birthday Plush

Dear Jess of six months ago: Right now, you're sitting cross-legged on the sticky floor of the Goodwill on Highway 84, aggressively Googling plush toy birthdates while your youngest tries to eat a rogue Cheeto off your shoe. You just discovered the "birthday twin" trend on TikTok, and because your middle child was born on September 24th, you're dead set on finding a vintage 90s stuffed animal with that exact date printed inside its little red heart tag. Put the phone down, wipe the Cheeto dust off the baby, and listen to me, because I'm writing this to save you a whole lot of headache, money, and a panicked call to the doctor.

My mom—who still has three Rubbermaid tubs of these things in her attic because she thought they would pay for my college, bless her heart—was the one who originally brought this up. She calls my middle child her little "e baby" because she buys literally everything for her off eBay, which is exactly how we ended up diving down this rabbit hole of upcycled, sustainable gifting. In theory, buying a vintage 90s toy instead of newly manufactured plastic junk is a great idea for the planet, and you know I'm always looking for ways to stretch a dollar. But there's a massive difference between a collector's item sitting on a shelf and a toy you hand to a feral toddler.

The creatures born on your kid's birthday

So, you're looking for a September 24th beanie baby. If you scour the collector databases like I did while ignoring a massive pile of laundry, you'll find out your kid shares a birthday with a few specific characters. There's Koowee the Koala, which was some fancy Australia exclusive. There's Charming the Unicorn, which is actually pretty cute. And then there's Twitterbug the Cicada.

I'm just gonna be real with you: who in their right mind designed a plush cicada? We live in rural Texas. From May to September, we already have actual demonic cicadas screaming in the pecan trees outside loud enough to penetrate the walls of our house and wake the baby over a white noise machine on maximum volume. Why on God's green earth would I want a stuffed version of one inside my home? It has these giant, bulging bug eyes and little weird wings, and of course, because kids have zero taste, it's the exact one your daughter is going to gravitate toward if you give her a choice. I spent three weeks trying to casually hide this plush bug under the couch cushions because every time I walked into the dark nursery and saw its silhouette on the rocking chair, I almost had a heart attack thinking a Texas-sized mutant roach had breached the perimeter.

Bidder and Merrybelle are just bears, so whatever, we're skipping those.

Anyway, getting a vintage toy is technically a win for the environment, but you've to actually look at what these things are made of before you let your kid sleep with one.

What Dr. Miller actually said about vintage stuffing

You remember what happened with your oldest, right? The cautionary tale of our family? He was two, and my grandma had given him some ancient stuffed dog from her guest room, and within forty-five minutes he had chewed through the neck seam. I walked into the living room and found him surrounded by thousands of tiny plastic pellets, making a beanbag snow angel on the rug and trying to put them in his nose. It took me a month to vacuum them all out of the carpet fibers.

I brought this up to Dr. Miller at our last checkup because I was paranoid about SIDS and choking hazards with these older toys. My doctor said absolutely nothing soft goes in the crib before they turn one, and I guess the science has something to do with the way carbon dioxide pools around their faces in soft blankets or toys, or maybe it's just a general suffocation risk, but my brain was running on three hours of sleep so the exact medical mechanism is a bit fuzzy. All I know is that Dr. Miller looked me dead in the eye and said the crib should look like a barren wasteland. No vintage koalas. No magical unicorns. Nothing.

Plus, these toys from the 90s are filled with plastic pellets, and a lot of the older ones have these hard plastic eyes attached by metal posts. If you want to keep your sanity and not end up in the ER, you need to yank that plastic heart tag off immediately, rip off the tush tag so they don't choke on it, and aggressively tug on every single seam before you hand it over to make sure twenty-five-year-old thread isn't about to give way.

Balancing the thrifted stuff with safe new things

Since you can't honestly put the vintage plush in the crib, you're going to feel guilty that you aren't doing enough for the whole "aesthetic, sustainable birthday" thing. When that happens, just pair the thrifted toy with something you honestly know is safe and functional.

Let me save you some money and tell you exactly what to buy. The Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit from Kianao is $24, and it's the only thing my middle kid practically lives in. You know how she gets those weird eczema flare-ups on her chest when she wears cheap polyester? My grandma used to say a little bit of baby powder cures everything, but rolling my eyes at that advice didn't fix the rash. Switching to organic cotton honestly did. I don't totally understand how GOTS certification works, but I guess farming cotton without a bunch of harsh chemicals leaves the fabric softer, and it breathes so much better during our brutal Texas summers. It stretches beautifully over her giant noggin, and it doesn't shrink into a weird square shape after one wash like the bargain bin onesies do.

Now, while you're shopping, you're also going to see the Wooden Baby Gym and think, "Oh, that will look so gorgeous in my beige living room!" Listen to me. You're going to buy this because it looks pretty, but I'm just gonna be real with you—your baby is probably just going to ignore the lovely hanging sensory toys and try to gnaw directly on the wooden legs instead. It's a beautiful piece of baby gear, it's very well made, and it doesn't scream annoying electronic songs at you, but don't expect it to act as a magical babysitter. It's just okay. Buy it if you want your house to look nice for Instagram, but manage your expectations.

If you're trying to build a collection of things that are seriously useful and sustainable to go with that birthday plush, you can explore Kianao's organic nursery collection.

Cleaning things that smell like 1998

So you brought the thrifted koala home. It smells exactly like dust, old perfume, and the inside of a 1998 Ford Taurus. Your first instinct is going to be to throw it in the washing machine on the sanitize cycle.

Don't do this.

If you wash a pellet-filled plush toy in a machine, the plastic beans inside clump together into a rock-hard tumor, the fake fur mats into a nasty dreadlock, and your kid will cry when you hand back a lumpy, ruined monster. Instead of tossing it in the washer and ruining it and having a meltdown, just shove the whole toy into a giant Ziploc bag with a cup of baking soda, seal it up, shake it around, and leave it on the kitchen counter for two days. The baking soda pulls out the weird attic smells. Then you just take it outside, shake the powder off, and wipe it down with a damp washcloth. It's annoying, but it works.

When they inevitably try to eat the eyes

Even if you clean it perfectly, there will come a day when your darling child decides the plastic eyeball of Koowee the Koala is the exact thing they need to soothe their erupting molars. You will find them gnawing aggressively on the poor toy's face.

When this happens, you've to trade them for something else before the eye pops off. Have the Panda Teether already washed and sitting in the fridge. I can't stress enough how much of a lifesaver this thing is. It's made of food-grade silicone, which means I can just chuck it in the dishwasher when it gets dropped on the Target floor, and it has all these little textured bumps that seem to hit the exact right spot on their gums. It's cheap, it's safe, and it distracts them perfectly from trying to consume vintage plastic.

So, past Jess, buy the cute birthday twin plush if you want the sentimental photo op. But keep it on a high shelf out of reach, stock up on organic cotton that won't give them a rash, and for the love of everything, leave the stuffed cicada at the Goodwill.

Before you go get yourself lost in an online bidding war for a twenty-five-year-old bear, do yourself a favor and get your nursery stocked with safe, sustainable gear. Check out the organic baby essentials at Kianao to find things that won't give you a panic attack when your baby puts them in their mouth.

Questions you're probably Googling right now