Blankets and Loveys

It's a well known fact that small children will find some object that they will absolutely fall in love with before they turn a year old. For most children, their blanket becomes their favored object for many years. For others, they love a stuffed animal or toy. It's impossible to be sure what your child will come to adore and even more impossible to convince your child to love a specific object of your choosing.

I have come to realize that children often attach to whatever they are exposed to within the beginning weeks of their life. This may not hold true for all children, but certainly does for the children around here. So, I have a bit of advice for those of you with new babies coming into the world.

Whatever receiving blankets you buy for your baby to use in the first weeks of his life - BUY EXTRAS! (lots and lots of extras)

I say this because Kira has two blankets that she adores. The two blankets she adores the most are the two that we were using when she was born. Lucky for me I did buy a couple of packs of each so I have (had) a few extras. Over the years some of her "Sheep" blankets have disappeared. We found ourselves down to only ONE special Sheep blanket. Off to Ebay I went in search of proverbial needles in the haystack. I was lucky with the sheep blanket. I found lots of them. So I bought lots of them.(I won't tell you how much I spent on those blankets.) We now have about five sheep blankets. Kira, of course, has shunned the new sheep blankets because they are too soft. They are not as worn and loved as her favored blanket so they don't feel quite the same. The person I bought them from hadn't used them nearly as much as we used ours. I've explained to her that all she needs to do is love them a little and they'll become just perfect like her original Sheep blanket. Ever try reasoning with a 4 yr old?

Kira's other favored blanket is named Blueberry. He is the most favored and most preferred blanket of all. We currently have three Blueberries here in our home, but two of them are MIA. They are here, we just don't know where. So in reality there is only one for the time being. Now, Sheep can be lost and the world would not end. There would be sadness, but no real disaster. If Blueberry were to disappear the world would stop turning, the sun would turn black, the oceans would freeze solid... Let's just say it wouldn't be good for anybody within a 1,000 mile radius. Here I am with only one Blueberry to be found. I know those others are here, but WHERE? So off to Ebay I go. I've been to Ebay several times in search of extra Blueberries to no avail, but I keep trying periodically. I have yet to see a Blueberry. Apparently my child is not the only child in the world who loves her Blueberry blanket. There are none to be found anywhere. (Let us all hope and pray that the extra Blueberries in my house decide to come out soon.)

If your child shows a particular interest in a certain animal, especially one that plays music, go buy an extra one and put it away for later.

If there is a favored animal, you might ought to hunt down an extra one before the favored one becomes tattered beyond recognition. Musical animals and toys are even more important to duplicate because many of them have batterries that can not be replaced in order to fix the dying music. (Yes, I learned this the hard way!) Your child will inevitably play the music until the batterries are long gone and then become increasingly distraught when the music they love so much is no longer available.

**The key to making this process of duplication work is through a series of rotation. In my house, with the blankets, we just made them all available. I can't tell you how many times we went somewhere with Kira holding on to every single one of her Sheep blankets AND Blueberry blankets. It might be a hassle for us, but she was very happy being able to take all her treasured blankets along for the ride. As a benefit, all the blankets became worn at the same time so none were different from the others.

You may be wondering about Marisa and what she's become so attached to around here. Well, she does love her fluffy blankets. They are completely different from Kira's. Kira likes the receiving blankets that have no fuzz on them. Marisa likes the blankets that are fluffy and fuzzy and soft to touch. But what Marisa loves most of all is her pacifiers. She doesn't have one specific favorite, she has about 20 pacifiers that she hides throughout the house so that whenever we take one away from her she can go get another one. She used to have favorite hiding spots for her pacifiers, but since we moved I think she's forgotten where she hid most of her pacifiers because we're currently down to three, and I've been unsuccessful in locating those others.

One last thing - if your child happens to attach to her thumb, be sure that her thumb is cared for and never, ever injured. Kira LOVES her left thumb. Yes, the left thumb is the only one that will do. The right thumb isn't good enough. (See me rolling my eyes here...yeah, it's caused us a great deal of grief.) Last night was the first night ever that Kira had to sleep without sucking her thumb because she somehow poked her left thumb with a sharp object and whenever she sucked on it her thumb would hurt and the injury would bleed a little. She was devestated and cried over her injured thumb for nearly an hour. I'm a bad mom. I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.