'Beary' Happy

Ok...I know I promised some family pictures, which I am excited to share (and during which those first two pictures were taken), but I had to blog on my love/hate relationship with a member of our family. She's pink and furry and really doesn't do much. Unless you count bringing sheer delight on the face of a toddler doing something. Her name is Beary (creative, huh?) She's been Claire's BFF for almost 2 years now. Yes, I said BFF. Mommy's great, sissy's pretty cool, Daddy and Bubby make her laugh, but no one can match Beary! I love that Claire gets so much pleasure out of a stuffed bear, but here comes the hate part. You see, we had it worked out that Beary had to stay in her crib and go "nigh-nigh." She'd either drop her aimlessly or carefully tuck her under a blanket and that was that. She'd see her again at naptime and then again at bedtime. This eliminated the issue of ever having to find Beary and kept her fairly clean. Well...seems I am much the pushover mommy. Here's a common scenerio that occures in the Ernst household nowadays. We wake up, put Beary nigh-nigh, change diaper, and then go downstairs for breakfast. The mood of my almost 2 year old is usually pretty chipper in the mornings. The sun is shining, a tummy gets fed, all is well in the world. Fast forward to about mid-morning, oh, I'd say usually around 10ish. Claire starts to get whiney and tries to communicate some sort of jibberish. Her whine proceeds to turn into a cry. Maybe she's thirsty. Nope. She heads in the direction of the stairs to go to her room. When I get up there, she is in a full-blown, mad cry and there she is trying desperately to get her precious Beary out of the jail, er...crib. I've tried to reason with Claire, telling her that Beary needs to keep sleeping. But come on, the solution seems pretty simple. Give the poor child her bear. And so I reach in and give my little girl what will heal her woes in a matter of seconds. And that is how quickly the tears stop flowing...seconds.

*Here is a picture of Clairey and Beary September of 2007, when she used to stay in her crib.