Teddy bears

I was lying here in bed tonight with dell the mini laptop thinking thinking thinking and not coming up with much to blog about.  Then Lazyboo gave me a lovely frivolous idea when she said,

“This bear is always attacking me!”

I love teddy bears and still sleep with one.  This all started when my very first girlfriend gave me a little bear with a hard rock cafe tshirt that she had got in florida when we were first separated.  That was Freddy.  I slept with him for over 15 years and he still sits proudly on a shelf in our hall.  Lazyboo now tells me that I had stopped sleeping with him except for when I was pissed at her or upset about something…

In any case, he was only replaced when Lazyboo and FenFox gave me my current bear for Mother’s day last year.  The theory was to give me some incentive to keep my arms down and not sleep with them above my head which was causing all sorts of problems with my shoulders and neck.  FenFox dubbed him Scruff  ‘cos i couldn’t think of anything else Mama!’.  He’s bigger and fluffier and softer than Freddy and I find it oh so relaxing to snuggle him tight and feel his soft fur on my face.   This is how I go to sleep most nights.  Lazyboo is not such a fan and claims that once I’m asleep I just throw him at her and sleep with my arms up anyway.  And then wake her up searching for him.

With this love of the sleep bear, it is no surprise that both of our children also have their bears. I have blogged about McBean’s Leo with the disgusting tail before.  FenFox has also always had a bear.  When she was just a tiny baby, it felt like one thing after another was happening with her, and it was while she was in the hospital yet again (that time for unexplained seizures) that I found her very first bear.  She was a cute little black bear with a maroon bow.  We called her ‘Courtney’ after the little baby in the next cot (who was suffering from a congenital illness that had just taken her twin sister, and who would lose her fight about a week later).  This was shortened to Cordy bear when FenFox couldn’t say the whole name.  This bear was loved so.  FenFox couldn’t sleep without her and would go to sleep rubbing the bear’s nose on her mouth.  I’ve just recently unearthed a video of 8 month old FenFox doing just that and I’m so glad to have recorded that.

Over the years, Cordy bear was repeatedly lost (usually when FenFox was with her dad but that’s another story) and each time I would return to the children’s hospital gift shop to get a replacement.  And each time I would remember baby Courtney and feel so very grateful for my healthy growing girl.  This happened so often that the bear became known as ‘New Bear’.  That bear is a part of so many memories of FenFox’s life.  A good memory is that my mother made a replica of the bear for Fenfox’s first birthday cake (the black icing was awesome as was the mess it created!) and a bad one was that the only ever toddler tantrum that she had was one day at the age of 4 when we asked her to leave the bear in the car on a road trip.  I was philosophical the day that R1 brought 5 year old FenFox home with the news that the latest New Bear had been lost. But I was so very sad when I traipsed back to the hospital to get another one to find that the company had stopped making them.  Despite much searching, I’ve never been able to find another one.

Since then, FenFox has adopted various sleep toys, from Charla the big pink cat to an old pound puppy to Aqua the penguin.  Lazyboo says that she has periodically slept with a whole zoo of animals.  Right now, it’s all about Rani the tiger cub that we got for her on our trip to Qld just before McBean.  I wonder if she’ll ever get too old for a bear?  Or will she be like me and never grow out of it?

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