There is no love like a mother’s love. True statement. I’ve observed something in my daughter that rivals a mother’s love. It’s called “lovey love”.
When I look at her bed, I often ponder: “What is with all of these loveys?” An entourage joins her in slumber every night.
The top six loveys are lammy, blankie, sleeping bunny, Chester the large cat, princess blanket and the unicorn pillow pet. They can be found all jammed up around her as she drifts into la la land.
Everyday, she adds a new one to the night night crowd and the ranks swell to 10 or 15. I’ve seen stuffed animals of all sorts join the slumber party – horses, rabbits, kittens, puppies and the ladybug happy napper (a waste of money). When it starts getting ridiculous, I take all of them out and leave the original six. And then the cycle starts all over again.
When we travel, I limit the loveys so she always chooses unicorn pillow pet, lammy and blankie. The rest are left to wallow in their sadness over not being chosen and patiently wait for their adopted mother to return.
I wonder what this lovey fest says about her personality. She is a “more the merrier” kind of gal unlike me who crumbles under chaos; it makes me crazy.
As the days pass, I know she will mature beyond the need for her lovey entourage, which deeply saddens me (and makes me want to bawl my eyes out because I’m PMSing) and I wonder who will make the cut for the later years.
Smarties, what loveys have your children adopted into your family?
3 comments
OMG! We have a crew in the crib that I just don’t understand. And they have a pecking order for sure. In order of importance: Lovie, New Lovie, Puppy, Catapillar and bunnie. Just this weekend, Moose, Chick, Giraffe and rabit got the boot. Not sure what they did to get exhiled, but I am glad to see the numbers go down.
All four of my kids still have to have their lovey fix, no matter where they go. Pillow pets were the greatest invention ever b/c they work awesome for small pillows in the car and they can be used as primary pillow when traveling.
My 11-year-old has a beat-up Gund lamby aka “Mimi” that she still takes with her to sleep-overs, camp, etc. She would D-I-E if she knew I was documenting this:-) My 9-year-old has a pink bear that her auntie gave her as a baby – that thing is dangling by a thread, not sure how many more years it has left. My twins have been addicted to the small square blankies that were baby gifts. They are almost shredded, but still do the job. The only scary part about those is that the silk trim gets frayed and we have had two instances where a thread was twisted around a finger in the middle of the night – so tight that the finger tip was black. Very, very scary for sure. Lucky for us we caught it in time. And cut out all silky trim for all blankies. So be ware!
my 10 year old still has his lovey that he has slept with every night since he was 9 months old, it was a lion from the jelly cat stuffed animal line, it now looks like road kill. It is just one big lump of love now. We actually have the exact same one that we got once we realized how important this one lovey was but by the time we found a “back up” the first one was so worn that there was no way the back up was ever accepted. They look like totally different creatures. We have had a few scares with it getting lost or misplaced, I even had to make a drive back to a certain camp in the area after it got left on his bunk at a Y-guides longhouse weekend. The camp even went and looked for it and did not see it, but I had to drive out there for myself and look and sure enough he was wedged between the mattress and the wall and with him being so worn out and flattened, you could only see him if you climbed up on the top bunk. I won major mom points for that one!! He took him to sleep over camp the last two years and we got a special zip up pillow case that he would put him in during the day to keep him safe and then at night when he would go to sleep he would just unzip the pillow case and there he was, and the first thing he would do in the morning would be to zip him up. And when we loaded his stuff up to come home I had to make sure I saw him with my own eyes before we left the camp. At this point he will probably to go college with him, which I am fine with, looking at it as good birth control!
With our second child when he became attached to a certain puppy we immediately went out and found a second a back up and started rotating them in his crib so they would be equally as loved in case something happened to one of them, but even then he had a preference for one over the other, he would call them “happy puppy” and “sad puppy”, and even though my husband and I could not tell the difference he sure could! He has now out grown his need to take him everywhere.