Lovies held hostage

Auntie Em picked Rachel up from Bonnie's house yesterday after she got off work. Rachel's bedtime has been ignored this past week, which is probably alright considering we will be completely throwing her off her schedule in the next few days. Still, since she had been up until 10:30 the night before, we figured that it would be nice for her to get to bed on time for once.

So Emily shows up at the Parks' door.

"How is it that you're related to Andrew?" asked Matt.

"I'm Andrew's brother," answered Emily.

She was quite embarrassed. She was thinking of two answers at once--I'm Andrew's sister and Andrew's my brother--and they kind of got squished together. An easy mistake to make.

Even though she made this blatant error of her identity, Matt and Bonnie gave Rachel to Emily anyway, along with the diaper bag.

Rachel and Emily made a stop a the park and Rachel completely played herself out before they headed home. She was so tired! So, after a quick (ha, ha!) bum change and brushing of her teeth, Rachel was off to bed.

I had written out a page of instructions for Emily, telling her where to find everything and little tips on how to make Rachel a happy girl. The bedtime tips were to give her her favorite blankey and her baby doll, turn on her Primary songs, rock her for a few minutes, and lay her down.

Rachel is kind of like I was as a child and she needs her blankey before she can go to bed.

Unfortunately for Emily, the blankey was no where to be found. She hunted all around the house, while Rachel screamed, trying to find the blankey. Eventually she braved the chaos of our bedroom and found what she was looking for: a pink crocheted thing.

She gave that to Rachel, along with the doll that Rachel got for Christmas. Rachel snuggled right down in her crib and immediately went to sleep. Emily didn't hear a peep from her.

Emily was lucky. I suppose we're all lucky.

You see, Emily didn't actually find Rachel's baby doll or her favorite blanket. What she found were counterfeits. The real baby doll and blankey were being held hostage at the Parks'--they had forgotten to give them to Emily.

However, since receiving her "favorite" baby doll from Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Frank, Rachel has also accepted her other baby doll as a baby doll. Beforehand she didn't really like it, but now that she knows how much fun it is to carry a dolly around she'll take either one.

The blanket Auntie Em found was actually a blanket I was working on when I lived in Russia. It's one of those eternally unfinished projects that I have going on. It's bright, cotton candy pink--I fell in love with the color when I was living in Russia, perhaps because it was so bright and cheerful and I felt surrounded by dull gray. Don't go to Russia in the winter. Spring is beautiful. Winter is horrible. To make a long story short, I found this blanket while packing and put it in a pile of things to be packed Rachel found it in said pile, pulled it out and snuggled with it. I decided then that it could be the backup blanket.

My friend Emily, who lived in Voronezh with me and taught me how to crochet and watched me labor over my cotton candy pink blanket for months, made Rachel a blanket that exact same color and brought it up to us, all the way from Arizona, before Rachel was born. This is Rachel's beloved blankey.

I can only imagine what Auntie Em's night with Rachel would have been like had she not stumbled across the backup blanket--I hadn't thought to tell her that we even had a backup blanket.

Not many people do, but since I was such a difficult child about my blankey and since I've read horror stories of people trying to recover "lovies," we decided that having a backup blanket was quite a good idea, and if Rachel would take the counterfiet version, no psychological scars would be rendered by a swap.

She survived last night alright, although we did go over to visit with Amy and Bonnie this afternoon to retrieve the blanket and dolly just to make things a little easier tonight!