Regarding Teddy

If you've ever met Lucy, you've most likely also met her Teddy Bear, who accompanies her not merely while she sleeps, but on most outings, visits, and activities. Teddy was a gift from Stephan and Jess, and he's a wonderful, lovable fuzzy guy. Early on, when we realized that Lucy had really taken a liking to this particular fuzzy guy, we bought a "backup Teddy" in the same style in case of loss or other harm. We exchanged the two every once in a while to keep him clean and keep up the appearance that this was just one bear.

But recently, BOTH teddies have been showing a lot of wear. When people on the street see him, they comment on what a "well-loved teddy" he is (and they don't even know that the one they're seeing shows only HALF the wear!). Worrying about what would happen if serious medical intervention was needed for Mr. Teddy, we actually bought two more backup teddies. The problem is, those, more recently purchased Teddies looked SO DIFFERENT from the original 2 teddies. The new ones were plumper, their fur shinier and not matted, and their arms still had stuffing in them. Either we had to actively mess them up to make them look like the current teddies, or somehow make Lucy believe that her original teddy had magically transformed. But could that possibly work? We were skeptical.

Fast forward to last Thursday, when Lucy got sick in the middle of the night, apparently without waking up. When we realized what had happened, we put her in the bathtub and laundered everything in sight. Teddy was in bad shape. So we thought, well, maybe this is the chance. Previously, we had never told her that we were washing Teddy -- we just switched the dirty Teddy with the clean one without her knowing that anything was amiss. But this time, since she knew Teddy was in a Bad State, we thought it might work to tell her that we were going to clean Teddy and the shiny, dapper fellow we were returning to her was simply Teddy after the bath.

It worked. Sort of. My fear was that she would revolt completely, knowing that this was not HER Teddy, and she would reject the new bear. Instead, she embraced him, delightedly cooing "My NEW Teddy! Look! Look!" She seemed to have no worries about where old Teddy was. We had a brief moment of panic when she asked what was in his hand (where he has stitching) and we realized we didn't know if the previous Teddy was the same (turns out they were the same). It's interesting that she seemed to both believe that this was HER Teddy, at the same time that it was a NEW Teddy.

Here's a shot of Lucy & Carter with the plump NEW Teddy:

So far, so good. We'll be bringing NEW Teddy (and his backup version) along with us for our next trip. I wonder how long it will take for him to look like his predecessors. And I wonder how much this whole charade is going to mess up Lucy in the future, when she reads this and understand that there were four teddies masquerading as one lovey. We'll start the future therapy fund now.