Baby, I’m Yours!

5 years ago if you had told me that I would care, I mean really care, about a little stuffed animal blankey, I would have laughed. 

Shortly before I stopped teaching my third graders threw me a “surprise” baby shower.  One of my students gave me a blankey/stuffed animal all in one.  You know those things that have an animal head on one end, blankey in the middle and feet and buttom on the other end? 

My husband so nicely referred to it as looking like “road kill” with it’s flattened middle.

Anyways, this little lamb turned out to be my son’s lovey.  As in “return to the church and search through the nursery when you realize it was left behind…” “can’t fall asleep without it…” kind of lovey. 

 

 

When I was preggo with my daughter he was just under two and he named his little blankey, “baby”.  Not sure if it was because I was always talking about my baby or what.   But 3 years later the name has stuck. 

And each of our children has a “baby” of their own which they sleep with and snuggle with when they don’t feel good.  

Two weeks ago my son’s baby went M.I.A.

At first I wasn’t too worried about it, thinking surely “she” would turn up somewhere.  And now that he is bigger, he can go to sleep without her so it wasn’t the urgent emergency it would have been a few years ago.

Still, we wanted to find her.

After stripping his bed and washing his sheets (thanks to the great germs floating around the circus these days) and rearranging his bedroom, and searching EVERY WHERE, and then looking again, and then swallowing my pride and allowing our guests to search my house (read see those corners you typically try to hide from company) and two weeks of searching, still no baby.

My son (and I) began to get afraid baby would never turn up. 

I know he is almost grown out of baby.  That was evidenced by the fact that he was able to go to sleep for two weeks without her and without tears.

But, still he missed her, and so did  I.  I have sweet memories of my little man snuggled up with baby. She’s been on every vacation.  Through every sickness.  Helped him when he had to wean off of the pacifier.  She comforted him when he was scared in the church nursery.

She was the symbol of his baby and toddler days that I planned to hold onto as a keepsake through the years.  You know that one little lovey that you saved in a box to pull out years later and look at with nostalgia?

And she was gone.

And even if I could go to the store and by one that looked exactly the same, it wouldn’t be the same, it wouldn’t be the one that had been with us through the good times and bad.

So, you can imagine my his joy and relief when Grandma found her behind our entertainment center on Saturday. 

She’s back, and we all couldn’t be happier.