Puppy love

Tori's post about Livie's blanket snobbery reminded me of the post I've been thinking about doing for awhile now. None of my older three children have been super attached to an object. Megan on the other hand is a different story. When Megan was born, my SIL sent us a package. Inside was a little stuffed animal puppy for each of the kids, with a note specifying that the white puppy was supposed to go to Megan. The twins had already claimed dibs on their respective puppies (Kaylyn got the white one) before I found the note. Megan got stuck with the leftovers. She was only a few weeks old at the time so I didn't think she would put up too much fuss.

When she was a few months old I found the 'leftover' puppy and encouraged her to play with it one day. For some reason I felt she needed a special play mate. I hadn't really encouraged this with any of my other kids. It didn't take long for her to get attached to this puppy, even at a young age.

Megan at around 9 months old when the puppy was still soft and squishy - she fell asleep while playing

When I realized that she was getting very attached to this puppy I asked my SIL to see if she could locate another puppy identical to this one as backup. It was supposed to be our "just in case" puppy, or the puppy for when the other puppy was 'taking a bath' or otherwise unavailable. Somehow she ended up with both of them and quickly grew attached to both puppies. She was so attached, that bedtimes could be quite traumatic if we couldn't locate both puppies.

Two years old

Three years old

Then about a year ago she started to favor one puppy over the other. She loves them both, but one is her "savorite". I am not sure, but I think it was the original puppy. It is hard to distinguish between the two. They are both matted and ugly very well loved. No matter how often I wash them, they just don't come clean anymore.

Which one of these is not like the other?

When we got home from our trip to Utah this summer I couldn't find one of the puppies. I was just sure that somewhere along the way home it had fallen out of the car or something and we had lost it forever. I was devastated on her behalf. After about a week of telling her, we would look for it again tomorrow it turned up. Happy day!

I am pretty sure the only way to get her to let go of her puppy love is to get her ....a real puppy.

Summer 2007 - with my sister's dog Lacy. I know that yappy sweet dog was never as happy as it was the day that we left Utah to come back home. Megan carried and chased it everywhere and loved it nearly to death.

I'm hoping that by the time she is old enough to date the puppies can stay home.