When Teagan was born we got lots of presents. As with many new borns a lot of the gifts we received were in the form of plush stuffed animals to put in her crib. Even before she was born I pondered what stuffed thing she would gravitate towards. In our family the “loves” or items kids attach to have been stuffed animals. I know many people have blankets and other stuff but for all the kids I remember we liked stuffed animals. My sister had her lamb. At least one of her kids had a lamb also, and the other two i know had animals but I can’t remember what they were. I think mine was the dog Benjy dressed up as Sherlock Holmes.
The problem with any item that a kid attaches to is that if you lose it you have big problems. For Morgan my dad was able to purchase extra Lamb’s once we knew that the lamb was the one she gravitated towards. That way they had a backup in case you needed to clean one or something happened to it.
For Teagan we limited what was in her crib early on. I think there was one little lamb in the crib and a few other items. Her crib was not like some others that I have seen were you couldn’t find the kid in all of the animals. Once she did get exposure to more of them I was moderately surprised that she selected a brown monkey. There was a pink monkey that I swore she would have picked, but she knew what she wanted and picked the larger two tone brown monkey.
After a few short weeks we knew this was this monkey was her lovey. That meant we needed to act fast and get a backup one. MC said the monkey was a gift from my mom. I called my mom and she told us she got it at Pottery Barn Kids. MC went online and ordered 2 of what she thought was the same monkey. When we got it we realized it wasn’t the same. it was smaller and a slightly different style monkey. We thought about it for a bit and decided to switch out the totally different monkey for the new one that we had two of. To my pleasant surprise Teagan didn’t really notice that the new monkey was totally different size and fluffiness to the original one and attached right to it. After a few days our concerns that we would be found out were over and she was happy with her new lovey.
All was right with the world in the stuffed animal department until a few weeks go by. I don’t remember exactly how long but I was discussing what we did with my mom. She said why don’t I just go and see if they have the original doll at the store. We were happy Teagan had attached to the other monkey by now but I said sure it can’t hurt. She called us up one day at the store after confirming they had the type we wanted and asked if we really wanted it. It was on sale. I said sure, and MC and I agreed we should get 2 just in case. Just in case of what you might as? The answer is who the heck knows. If one backup doll is good, 2 should be better or so that was our logic.
Now we had a total of 5 monkeys. The dilemma was that Teagan is now attached to the smaller monkey we switched for the original. We figured we were able to pull off the switch once, we should try it again. The worst that could happen was she didn’t attach and she would get mad at us. If that happened we would just switch back to the other monkey. The time came to make the switch and as far as i can recall she looked it over for a minute but then totally accepted the original monkey as her lovey.
Teagan has been attached to that monkey ever since. Since we have three of the monkeys she uses we keep two of them in my closet and swap them out when we need to clean them. One or two time she has sniffed it a bit and she would look at us skeptically but she hasn’t rejected it yet.
Seeing it first hand how attached she is to the monkey she has grown to call Dee Dee is pretty cute and funny. When she is getting a time out or just having a melt down she will call out “dee dee” constantly and will most of the time be soothed when she gets him/her. She sleeps with dee dee at every nap time and bed time. We instituted a rule that she can only play with dee dee in her room. MC wasn’t a fan of the idea but went along with my suggestion to do so. I didn’t want her to be too attached to her everywhere. She will now try to sneak dee dee out of her room during the day. Usually when we catch her and call her out for it she will just run back to her room and deposit him somewhere. Recently that may be in her crib, the rocking chair or even a little play crib we have that she brought into her room for dee dee.
At bedtime after Amelia was born we have been reading books outside of her room so we allow dee dee out right before bed. She is so cute when she cuddles up to it when she gets it.
The other monkeys are not gone however. The smaller ones were originally kept around for when we traveled. Generally there is one in the play room now and again that she plays with. She doesn’t know the history of it and will likely find out eventually. I am making an assumption that by the time she is old enough to read this blog or even find it she will be able to accept that there were 3 dee dee’s. In my (and MC’s) defense we did it for Teagan’s and our own sanity in the event we had a catastrophic stuffed animal loss. I stick by my decisions regardless of the consequences! Teagan I love you and please don’t play mind games with me when I am old and my memory is going as a form of payback!
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