Posted on

Baby.

If you’ve ever seen Sam in real life, chances are you’ve also seen Baby.

Baby is Sam’s beloved teddy bear. Baby’s not actually the kind of bear that’s intended to be, you know, played with – he actually originated as a holder for a Babies R Us gift card. Like this – only blue.

(Photo credit to consumerist.com, who points out that this bear comes with a tag that warns of its lead content, which is awesome. However upon further reading, I found out that said tag is only attached in the state of Illinois, which has a lower threshold of acceptable lead levels in baby toys than Ohio does. Which explains why Andy and I didn’t notice the warning on any of the 15 versions of Baby we purchased in Sam’s first 1.5 years of life, and also explains a lot of other things as well. Insert Ohio joke here.)

I’m also not sure when Sam became so attached to him, but the first pictorial evidence I can find of Baby’s existence is shortly before Sam’s first birthday.

See how nice and clean Baby is there?

That may or may not have been the original Baby. For a while, Sam had to have his Baby at all times, but Baby was interchangeable. I remember Andy going in to Babies R Us once to buy 7 or 8 of the things so we were never without one, and he made the check out person promise that they had 5,000 more in the back and that they weren’t going to run out. We even had a name for them – Backup Baby.

Unfortunately, last February when I was in Nashville at Blissdom and Andy was home with both kids and all three of them had a stomach virus and were puking their brains out, Sam decided to play “hide and seek” with Baby. Despite the fact that he did the hiding, he couldn’t seem to do the seeking and no one could find Baby. So, Andy broke out Backup Baby. Of course, Sam chose that moment to decide there was one Baby and one Baby only, and he wasn’t having it. Andy tried everything – he colored Backup Baby with marker, rubbed some dirt on his face… he even shaved off some of Backup Baby’s fur with a beard trimmer to make him look more worn out… to no avail.

They had a really great weekend.

A week or so later, I found the real Baby in a drawer in Kate’s closet. Sam and Baby were reunited. And they haven’t been apart since.

We’ve had some close calls – we’ve left him at restaurants, we’ve dropped him on the floor at stores, and most notably, we’ve left him in a hotel room and checked out (fortunately I rescued him from a pile of dirty bedding that was wadded up on the floor as the room was being cleaned) – but Sam doesn’t go anywhere without his Baby. He’s a little worse for the wear, but he’s still kickin’.

I know that someday Baby will end up like Woody in Toy Story – relegated to the bottom of the toy box, forgotten. But right now, he is a great source of comfort to Sam, which is in turn a great comfort to me.

Baby is a part of the family.

Post to Twitter

Posted on

Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard

My little shy, anti-social Sophie has really started to blossom in the last couple of months.  She’s really starting to be more social in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is that she l-o-v-e-s the other kids in her class at preschool.  But she especially big puffy hearts one kid in particular, and his name is Julio.

When Sophie started this particular preschool right after Thanksgiving, I was worried about her adjustment, but she got comfortable with the other kids right away. She mentioned Julio’s name within the first couple of days.  At first I was like “Julio? Really?”  – I thought maybe I was misunderstanding her.  But I asked her teacher, and sure enough – there was a boy in her class named Julio.  By the end of the week she had also mentioned a little girl named Ashley.   By the end of the second week, I knew the name of every kid  in her class (there are 12 including her).  She was excited to tell me about all her new friends, but Julio’s name is one she mentions without fail.  When I am dropping her off and she sees him walking down the sidewalk she gets so excited and yells, “Here comes Julio!” or “Look, Julio’s here!”

One day before Christmas when I went to drop Sophie off, I saw Julio’s mom dropping him off, and I tried to tell her how much Sophie luuurves Julio.  But, I discovered there is a bit of a language barrier: her response to me was to smile and nod and say “It’s cold!”  (Which it was.)  Dangit, I am really regretting that French minor I had in college!  Spanish would apparently have been much more effective!

A couple of days later when I went to pick Sophie up, the class was running a little late so they had me come in the room (usually they just throw the kids out the door at you).  As I was getting Sophie’s coat on, Julio kept saying “Bye So-PHIE, bye So-PHIE!” very energetically.  One of Sophie’s teachers smiled and said, “He doesn’t say much in English, so that means something right there.”

So apparently Sophie and Julio are members of the Mutual Admiration Society.

Sophie thanks Jesus for Julio every night at bedtime (usually either Ashley or another classmate, Dominic, also gets a shout-out to the big JC as well.)  She can now write his name, which along with her teacher’s name and Ashley’s name, is her favorite thing to write.

And every day after school, when I ask her who she played with at school, she yells “WHO-LEE-OH!” before I can even finish the question.

I’m super-excited that Sophie has made such good friends at school, and I think it’s just a LITTLE bit cute that her BFF is a little boy who speaks even less English than she does.

Also super-excited that it ties in so perfectly with a Paul Simon song.  I mean, really!  It’s Sophie and Julio down by the schoolyard, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Post to Twitter