For those of you out there (if there is anyone out there... Blogging has taken a back seat lately and I don't know if there is anyone out there that still reads this), who know Colby, you probably know that he has been VERY attached to a certain "Blankie" for the past 3 1/2 years.
This is the first known picture of blankie to be documented. Colby is 3 months old with said blankie, snuggling with Mimi and Camden in Maine. Just a little of it is tucking out, but even then it became his favorite.
It started out as a regular baby-size blanket, and it was a gift from one of Luke's aunts.
As time went on, blankie had many adventures. Occasionally it was left on the grocery store floor, only to be discovered missing as we were packing groceries in the car...Ah! back to the store to face weird looks from the store clerk, but nonetheless, recovered on the floor in the dairy section. Phew!
And many similar times forgot (but found again) at the library, in a snow drift, at family members houses, and at the church (and rescued from under our pew and returned by neighbors who knew the full importance of said blankie).
It wore thin and I repaired many holes. This picture was taken just after a mending session. He was happy to get it back after watching the surgery.
Finally, I decided to cut it into three pieces so I'd always have another, just in case I lost one. (I had looked online hoping to find a similar one, with no success).
A few months ago, I had an old cleaning rag sitting on the kitchen counter which Colby suspiciously eyed... and then asked me, "Is that blankie?" You can see the resemblance above (dish rag on the left, last of blankie on the right) which led to Camden to refer to it as "D.D.R." for dirty-dish rag.
His preschool teacher even recently gave him the book "
Owen" about a little mouse that drags his blankie everywhere and the tactics his parents and neighbors use in trying to wean him from it.
Bit by bit, we lost all three pieces... the last to go just before this last New Years Eve. I had braced myself for that day and so many people had said, "He will probably do better without it than you think".. and he did! He accepted the fact when we told him we couldn't find it.
Well, about three days later, I found one of the missing pieces trapped in the downstairs couch (which has been the culprit of many missing toys). However, at this point, I didn't want to re-introduce it. He'd done so well and was less clingy without it, and we were all happy not to be on a constant chase to answer the daily question of, "Where's blankie?"
So... I hid the last remaining piece to one day show him again, maybe when he's a senior in high school and I'm sure he won't revert back to it.
And I thought the story of blankie was over... until my Mom called me a week ago to tell me about something she'd discovered while searching through some of my old things including a bag of old doll clothes. She found the largest scrap of blankie that we had lost over a year ago (when I had been home visiting and going through a bunch of old boxes). After that trip, we'd chalked up the disappearance to falling out of the car at a rest stop on the trip home from Idaho because we knew it hadn't come home with us from that trip, and Mom had searched and searched the house for it.
After she found it, she had almost sent it in the mail as a surprise... but I told her to hold on to it until we come next time so I can discreetly hide it.
It had a good, almost four year-run. Now, Colby has gravitated to the always popular Tigger and a new friend named "Baby Sims"
(whose name comes from a cat my aunt Shelley had long ago that Camden loved... so he then named a favorite stuffed animal of Mimi's that all the grandchildren love 'Sims', and then Colby discovered a little stuffed cat that we've had kicking around the house for two years, and decided to name him "Baby Sims").
Here is Cobly reading a book to Baby Sims and Tigger.
He is the new "top cat" in our house. He takes him everywhere and has brought home drawings that his nursery and preschool teachers have drawn with great detail about Baby Sims.
And that is the legend of Colby's blankie!
