Bed Buddies

At some point in the past, Michael got the big basket of stuffed animals down off the shelf and showed them to Parker. We hadn't purchased any of them, receiving most as gifts or on top of gifts. I was never really a stuffed animal kind of gal, so I almost threw them all out. Someone (Amy? Michael?) convinced me that he may want them later on and so we stuck them up high.

So Michael shows them all to Parker, one by one. First the Indian cow puppet, then a musical teddy bear, then a giraffe missing one eye thanks to our beloved Kelly, then another fancy, fuzzy teddy bear, and then a small, plain beige teddy bear. Parker picked that one. He started carrying it around. Michael named him Ted. We didn't let Parker leave the house with him and taught him how to "put Ted night night" (ie hucking Ted in the crib and now toddler bed on his own.)

Then he started to like this small blue blankie (lovie) that I got him eons ago at Target. I can't remember why I bought it, but he started hanging out with him too. His name became Lion, since at the top of the blankie was a Lion head.

Every night he would get Ted and Lion and he would laugh with glee when he got them. He hugged them all night long and chewed on their faces at every opportunity. I got worried that we would lose Ted or Lion so every time I went to a Toy store, I would look for duplicates. I've yet to find them.

Recently, he started to add to his collection. Now he has Leo (another blankie type thing with another lion on it), Bob (yet another with a bear on it), Teddy Bear (which is exactly that, one of the rejects from months past), and Elmo (a small stuffed Elmo doll that a relative gave him during a recent trip to Los Angeles.)

Each morning, he wakes up and talks to them. He says, "Ted, Lion, Bob, Leo, Elmo, Teddy Bear," and from the sound of it standing just outside his door, they apparently talk back to him. He has little conversations until he has had enough and starts rattling the door.

Sometimes, he even wakes up in the middle of the night. I think he is confused since his Dad acts likes this when woken up in the middle of the night, but perhaps he is sleep walking. He usually goes to his door, sits down and starts shoving his buddies under it. It's pretty funny to watch from the outside since there is no noise when it is happening. Then you walk in and he gathers his friends and heads back to bed.

This morning, when I went in after the door rattling, he gathered all of them up and walked out into the living room. Then he asked to "watch tv show" (which means Baby Mozart aka Baby Crack). He sat down in what is now known as Parker's Swing (a baby swing that used to be his, but that he has taken back over since it was placed out for the gals.) He still had all of his buddies with him and he looked simply ridiculous. Let's hope he doesn't add to the collection more.