Mine

Not that anyone who reads this blog would probably ever believe it, but Grier was a bit of a, shall we say, difficult infant. She wasn't interested in a pacifier, but we noticed that she was constantly sucking on fabric. Like, she'd fall asleep with her head on your shoulder while sucking on your shirt. The thought of giving her a regular blanket to sleep with right against her face made me a little nervous, but then I discovered that Adan and Anais sells a 2-pack of loveys made from their signature muslin framed with satin. Sold!

As predicted, Grier latched right on to those blankies and the fact that there were two, meant that we could pretty much always find one or the other.

Here is a picture when they were still fairly new.

Over the course of time, one blanket ended up lost and the other started to show a significant amount of wear. That thing went everywhere with us and somewhere along the way, Grier started calling it, "Mine," so the rest of us did too.

When she was a baby, she'd actually suck on the fabric. Eventually, it turned into this positioning, however, where she just held it up to her mouth and nose.

"Mine" went everywhere with us. Here, you can barely see a piece of pink satin peeking out from under her tush, but it's there. That muslin fabric isn't quite as sturdy as the satin, so it started to wear out a lot quicker than the trim.

And then, Bo could do this with it.

So, I started tying knots in it to hold it together, as you can see with "mine" draped across her body here.

It didn't take long, before the muslin was completely detached and all that was left was the ratty ribbon of satin you see hanging in front of her body on this picture from May 2014.

This past summer, we started encouraging Grier to leave "mine" on her bed during the day instead of dragging it everywhere and holding it up to her face. A few weeks ago, Bill convinced her to give it up entirely and she did, for a few days. But she knew it was in the top drawer of his dresser and eventually, she had it back.

Then, one day last week, I came home from school and Grier told me, "Dad gived me three dollars!"

"He did?" I replied.

"Yeah. I threw away my 'mine' and he gived me three dollars for my piggy bank!"

It turned out, he had convinced her to put it in our big trash can outside, but he'd dug it out when she wasn't looking so I could save it as a keepsake for her. She never had any idea he took it out and today, as we were loading up so I could go to school, the garbage truck pulled up. "There goes my 'mine,'" she said. "I hope him see it in there." (Personally, I hadn't even thought of it, since I knew that "mine" was safe and sound in Bill's dresser again.) Not wanting her to be sad about it, I cheerfully said, "I know! And you have three dollars, huh?! That's so awesome!" And that was kind of the end of it.

When I got to school, I texted Bill to tell him how cute she was, but it only made him feel bad for sweet Grier. She really didn't seem that sad about it, though, so I figured she'd be fine. Then came bedtime.

Her little lip quivered as I covered her up and she said, "I wish I didn't throw my 'mine' away. My heart is beepin' for it."

"Are you a little sad?" I asked.

"Yeah. My heart is just beepin'."

You can say I'm a sucker, but I know an even bigger one, so I said, "Do you want to call and talk to Dad at the station?"

She wanted to, but when I handed the phone to her, she couldn't talk and she said, "I want you to tell him." As I suspected, it made Bill's heart "beep" too. He told me to put her on the phone again and he told her to have me lift her up by his dresser. You should have seen the hope fill her expression as it dawned on her that her "mine" might be in his dresser and the sheer bliss when she saw that indeed it was there!

I don't know what kind of bad lesson on follow-through that was, but I do know that a content little girl is snuggled up with her "mine" tonight and I didn't ever want to forget how it made my heartbeep happy. :)