Wednesday, May 4, 2011

ode to bedbaby

i've been lacking for blogging motivation lately, but got a little burst of inspiration from karen over at "ow, my anst" and that's how this little ditty came to be.

for any parent who has a kid who falls truly, madly, deeply in love with an object, when they're a really little kid, you can understand that the object, whether it be a toy, blankie, passie, doll or batman dvd (i saw a kid carrying one around a park one day & his dad said he never ever puts it down) becomes a part of the family. you can't go anywhere without it, you tuck it into bed each night, there's a good chance that it has a name & maybe even a personality or voice.

brooke was a newborn baby when she got her soft bodied doll. i used to tuck it into her crib with her since there were no hard parts and by the time she was 9 months old, we were calling it bedbaby & she was calling it "beeboppy." she loved bedbaby's hands, which are like little mittens with just a thumb & she would rub that thumb onto her lips as she was falling asleep. by the time her first birthday rolled around, bedbaby & brooke were inseparable.

this was on brooke's first birthday


brooke was a very vomitous child & that, added to the fact that she rarely put bedbaby down, resulted in me needing to wash her frequently. this was a problem. so we solved that problem by buying a second baby when we ran across one in a store. then, over the next year or two, we bought 2 more, resulting in us owning 4 bedbabies. i would rotate them out regularly so that all of them would hopefully be equally satisfactory and less than pristine so that brooke wouldn't know that there were in fact 4 babies. but then she found my stash. there was a whole pile of bedbabies in her closet & suddenly, she needed all of them, all the time. this became a frustration because when it was time to go somewhere, she felt the need to round them all up & truck them along with us on our outings. i had to put the kabosh on that pretty quick & she wasn't allowed to take more than 2 out at a time.



the other thing about brooke & her babies is that when she was out of the house with her babies, she would rarely take her thumb out of her mouth if a baby was in her hand. by the time she was 3, i had to forbid her to take them out of the car when we went places so that she wouldn't go into that drone state where she wouldn't talk or interact with the world, would only suck her thumb & go off to la-la-brookie-land.





at some point she decided that she had a favorite out of all the babies & that favorite was chosen based on her thumb. apparently, from how she can explain it now, this particular one has the biggest thumb & therefor it is the most desirable for lip rubbing. she named that one goodbaby. there was a runner-up in the thumb competition & she named that one newbaby since it was the most recently acquired addition to the baby gang that ruled our house. the other two were dubbed otherbaby & otherbaby. they were unappreciated because their thumbs were little more than nubs.


now baby lives only in brooke's bed unless we're going on a trip. she no longer inspires thumb sucking, but she's a source of big comfort and companionship during the dark hours.

there was even a poem written in her honor. my mom wrote it for brooke during bedbaby's hay days, before i started restricting her usage.

EDIT: for any of you who may have been here & read the original post, you'll notice that the poem is gone now.  i didn't ask my mom for permission before posting it & since it's her work, i should have done that. we've been thinking for years about making a book out of it, so maybe one day the bedbaby poem will be back in the form of a baby board book.






26 comments:

  1. That last picture of Brooke with her bedbaby is so beautiful. I think it's wonderful that she has a little friend that brings her so much comfort and security.

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  2. I agree with Ixy. That picture is great! And I love your mom's poem. I see where you get your talent!

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  3. that last picture you guys are talking about was actually taken at a studio when brooke was 4. i wanted to do something a little different, so i took her jammies & goodbaby & she made the perfect little sleeping angel, didn't she? i kind of want to eat her sweet baby face.

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  4. I love that post Sherilin... with the pictures and poem at the end by your mom, it was really beautiful... I still have my hand knitted dog that was my constant source of security for years!

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  5. Love, love the photos AND the poem!

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  6. that poem should be a book! Those were some great pics too. Amazing how much comfort these objects of wonder can offer up, no?

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  7. Awwwwww....just awwwww! I loved every single picture and the story behind bedbaby. Great post!

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  8. OH EM GEE!! Angelic!!!

    My son was the same with rubbing a satin strip along his chin... and HIS thumb.
    Sweet post, friend.

    I have been missing you!

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  9. what a sweet story! I loved ALL the photos...change is GOOD sometimes in all we do, we can't always laugh.Reflection is a wonderful thing- it shows us our growth and those around us. I love this little diddy. Thanks for sharing your life with us. You're a wonderful writer. <><

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  10. Those are some special memories for this Mimi. I kinda miss that little bedbaby girl. And that poem will always be one of my favorites. Thanks for posting it.

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  11. i'll never forget that time lisa and i were babysitting and just after brooke had laid down for bed she threw up... all over goodbaby. talk about a disaster of epic proportions. that was meltdown city for sure. fun times.

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  12. Loved this !!! I totally get it too. My kid's puffalump is still hanging on by a thread - quite literally as it is in tatters.

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  13. Love this! Great post!! #2 has a couple of those tag blankets that she can't go anywhere without. We purchased the first ones at Wally World, but then they decided to stop selling them so I had to break down and figure out how to make them. We can't go anywhere without "lovie", right now we have two wherever we go.

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  14. What a sweet post!! I had a bear that was really a handmade pillow that I loved and sucked my thumb his name was Gunny, I wouldn't go ANYWHERE without this guy. My mom even had professional picuture taken with Gunny in my lap! I still have him but sadly, he is just a shred of a rag of tattered fabric.

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  15. Love this post and your mama's poem. I agree w. KAREN. . ., it should be a little board book. And such sweet pictures, I just love reading your blog posts!

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  16. OK, does it make me a freak if I have a big fat tear in my eye about this whole post??

    Your Bedbaby looks so similar to my 15 yr old neice's soft doll, "Babya," which got shelved for a little bit when she was worried people might know she had a doll she loved. My sister also got backup Babyas, because they knew they couldn't be without. They no longer make the doll, but I always have my eye out -- even though Abby is 15, she still "tickles" her ribbon every now and then, and she also has a favorite. Abby wrote the saddest poem about Babya getting shelved.

    My Brookie has a blankie, "Nanny."

    Loved this post. :)

    --ps: and that poem your mom wrote -- that is AWESOME

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  17. What a lovely poem! My son had WhiteBlankie when he was little. It went everywhere. It was just a white cotton knit blanket but he fell in love it and we had to always have it with us. I had two of them so I could wash one and he wouldn't be wiser. When he was in kindergarten he had basically a handful of off white yarn that he would take with him in the car so it was there when I picked him up. One day as he got out of the car Whiteblankie fell in the mud. I said I would wash it but he took one look at it all muddy and said he didn't need a blankie anymore. Go figure.

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  18. LOVE this whole post!
    My oldest had a baby and a giraffe she wouldn't live without until about 3 yrs old.
    My youngest currently is in love with a blankie.
    So sweet!

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  19. Oh, this is so precious. I'm sorry I missed the poem, but I'll look forward to the book. :)

    When my boys were little, they always wanted to twirl my hair for comfort, so we bought them "little hair". Those little bits of hair that could be woven or pinned in to make it look like a woman had more hair. they would get matted up after awhile, so they always looked like were carrying around bits of roadkill. Kids are so great.

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  20. How adorable!!! Love the pics with the cat. What a face on the cat. Love it.

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  21. I love the bedbabies and cute photos of your precious daughter. Am now following from BPOW.

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  22. Came over from Lady Blogger Social Tea Party and can only agree, nice post and the second last pic is absolutely adorable. My little boy never had a comfort object, he's 2 3/4 yo. But no, that's not true, he has a big one and that is me the mommy. I don't know if that's better or worse. But I kind of enjoy it, soon enough he will be all grown.

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  23. Oh yes! This is familiar scene. My oldest was obsessed with Elmo when she was a toddler. She took Elmo everywhere. I had to buy a back up just in case Elmo got lost. Those favorite lovey toys are so stressful, but so darn sweet. ;-)

    Visiting here from LBS! Great post! :-)

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  24. love this! bedbaby - hilarious. I love that she found your stash and had to have them all. that's great.

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