Lady Bear

Some children have blankets, some children have teddy bears, our Ilana has...both...a "blankie bear" that we have named Lady Bear. It is a dis-embodied bear head and arms, in the middle of a blanket (see above for details). It is the best of both worlds - the side with the half bear on it is fuzzy soft, while the other side is silky soft. Aunt Valerie got it for her when she was only 3 months old and it has become her comfort. These days we don't go anywhere or do anything without Lady Bear. It's the only way we could get her to sleep through the night.

So you can imagine how distraught we all were when it was time to put her down tonight and Lady Bear was nowhere to be found. After 3 and a half hours of tipping our small apartment upside down I had resigned to the fact that, although Moses had never shown prior interest in Lady Bear, he had destroyed it, eaten it in its entirety and not left any evidence (something Moses would NEVER do). I happened to be walking down the hallway to our bedroom when I saw the folded up shade cover on her stroller, and although Paul and I had "checked the stroller" a hundred times already, I looked in the folds and sure enough...there she was. My heart leaped back to life and with huge smiles we delivered Lady Bear back to our still very upset, not asleep at all little girl. She responded with an enormous grin (one that I will NEVER forget) and immediately rolled over as if to say "I'm tired now, can I go to sleep?" So, we left her and her Lady Bear in peace. We haven't heard a peep from her since (about an hour ago).

The above picture was taken last week (she didn't even want to go into the pool without Lady Bear!), but the picture below was just taken this morning. I'm not sure we could have survived tonight if we had not found Lady Bear. Ah, the apartment is quiet, Ilana has Lady Bear and all is good in the world.
-H