It always amazes me how, for a toddler, just about anything can become a toy. Some of L’s favorites over the last few months have included an old cell phone, a wooden spoon and the tassel on a pillow at the cottage we rented in England (of course yours truly named the tassel, “Furry Tassel,” and he may or may not have become liberated from the pillow when we left).

Perhaps my favorite of her favorites is something entirely different: A tiny plastic bust/finger-puppet of actor, rapper and pro wrestler John Cena.

I won the thing at some Go-Kart place in Las Vegas a few years back, and had been using it as a card-keep for cash poker games. Then, one day, as L was rummaging through some stuff in my office, she found it and made it her own (obviously, I washed it vigorously first).

Today, she calls it “JohnCena” (one word), and plays with him mostly in the tub. Last night, for instance, after I finished washing L, she took the washcloth and washed JohnCena, carefully scrubbing his plastic hair, plastic nose and plastic ears. When she finished bathing him, she smooched him. Then she put him on a plastic duck-boat and motored him around the tub.

If the whole scene weren’t so cute, it probably would have freaked me out.

Anyway, it also has me wondering what “toy” my daughter will adopt next. A SIGG water bottle? One of my million-year-old whale fossils? Perhaps a steno pad?