Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The "Lovey" Conundrum

I'm a big believer in the "lovey"...  You know, the random object that your kid latches onto and then can't be without during sleeping hours, (and some awake hours!) for most of their early childhood years?  Yeah, that.

(Though when I put it that way...)

Anyway, I love that my kids love me, but I've always wanted them to have an object of comfort that they could cuddle also. Lex, now almost 5, has had the same little blanket since she was born... Remarkably, we've never lost it for more than a few hours, (which is good since they stopped making it by the time she latched onto it...   and have you SEEN the price for those out of circulation blanket things on Ebay?! Craziness!  But I'd have paid).  She's since added a second, similar blanket and sleeps with them both.  Normal, you know?

So, seeing the success of Lex and her "night-night," we decided to introduce one for Caly when she was a baby.  This time, knowing how random the attachments could be, we guided the process a bit.  We chose one of these cute blankets and added another just in case.  In the course of her life, we've purchased 4, lost 3, and found 2...  so the kid now has FIVE of these blankets.  And insists on using ALL of them every night.  (And they're all different animals).  Bedtime is easy, so long as Monkey, Giraffe, Bear, Duck and Bunny are in bed with her.  Slightly weird, but again, not bad.

Now, Sayer.  Oh man.  I TRIED to get that kid to take a lovey. I gave him his choice like we did with Lex...  I held soft blankets while nursing like I did with Caly... But apparently, *I* was his lovey.  And he was quite content with that.  Considering that I most often nursed him to sleep, that worked out fine for the most part.  But then when he weaned, things got a little strange.  He was old enough to ask for things or to run and get them, and would frequently climb into my lap to be rocked with weird objects.  Balls... plastic figurines... nasal aspirators, (yes, that happened...  for like a week, he wanted to fall asleep with one in each hand).

Weird.

As he got older, he got way more vocal about what he wanted.  For a time, he had this strange looking baby doll, ("BABY!") that he demanded.  Then he moved onto stuffed animals.  Occasionally, he'd want to snuggle with a book.  Or a sippy cup.  Sometimes it'd be an article of clothing, like a sock. It was generally whatever happened to be in his hands before bedtime.  But it was always something.

But yesterday, things got a little hairy.  He had somehow procured the sound pad from one of those Play-A-Sound books... an Elmo one.  And every single time Shaun tried to get it away from him, he screamed like someone was pinching him.  So Shaun shrugged his shoulders and picked Sayer up to rock him, the sound pad clutched in one chubby toddler fist and a sippy cup of water in the other.

Now, not a big deal, you'd think.  But it's amazing how utterly obnoxious Elmo can be when he's cackling in YOUR SLEEPING CHILD'S EAR and causing him to WAKE UP.  Yeah.  So we had a predicament.  Take it away, and pretty much guarantee a big wake up and a screaming fit or take the chance that he would sleep through any rogue Elmo mutterings and slip it out of his hands when he lay soundly asleep.

We opted for the latter, but not without penalty...  Elmo and his evil energetic chatter roused the toddler twice but he was quickly settled.  Before we went to bed, I snuck in and slipped the offending sound pad from under his arm.

Now... now I'm sure to steer him towards softer and quieter items before bedtime... and though I'm still hoping for a conventional lovey...  I'm not holding my breath.

7 comments:

  1. HA! That's awesome. I remember the night Christopher slept in his talking Hulk shirt. All night long I heard "HULK IS THE STRONGEST, RAWRRHHH!!" coming out of his room.

    Some days I wish we lived in a little house out on a prairie.

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  2. I love it! He is soooooo adorable (have I told you that before? All of your kids are adorable.). Jack still uses his Pooh blanket my mom gave him as an infant. It goes on first, and then the ECU blanket. He also has to sleep with a cow we got from Chik-fil-A. Hilarious! Hemi has a puppy and a few Little Einsteins blankets he sleeps with every night.

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  3. "Occasionally, he'd want to snuggle with a book."

    I mean, obvs...

    (ps love the pic!)

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  4. My little munchkin does the same thing, I am his lovey, along with a random object. His recent favorite has been a pickle. He just likes to hold a pickle while I nurse him to sleep, occasionally stopping to take a bite.

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  5. E likes to take random things to bed with him also... maybe not as random as nasal aspirators though. On the list for us are stuffed animals, books, sippy cup, blankets, cars, balls, trains, blocks. Maybe it's a boy thing?

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  6. Abby has mean parents - I went out of the way to make sure she does not have that *one* thing. She is happy to snuggle with just about anything, and anywhere. I kind of wish we had gone the other direction, especially when we were living with the cousins and Abby had some VERY hard nights...

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  7. All 3 of my kids have bankies aka blankies. Phabian was about 9 months old when we took away his binky and gave him a blankie but he didnt like it. He then found my blankie from when i was a baby and has had it ever since. It has fallen apart, been sewed back together, and had piece cut off because it was not sewable. MJ has a blankie we bought him as an infant, as does Sione'. None of them will sleep without them and God forbid if we ever lost them we would be in trouble.

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