Monday 14 April 2008

Army of darkness

Easter last year Peanut's Auntie Lulu (who is also my sister of course) gave Peanut a little soft toy lamb that M34tb4LL and I have aptly named "Lambie".

After a while the lamb became Peanut's one of favourite toys, not to play with during the day, but to cuddle at night.

The little soft toy has become a vital part of Peanut's night night routine and when he wakes up in the morning he is always holding the lamb in his hand as he reaches out for over the side rail of his cot.

A couple of months ago Peanut had a rather nasty bout of gastro and unfortunately poor Lambie got in the way of one of Peanut projectile emissions, and of course had to be removed so it could be washed. It was fortunate that for his first birthday (that had taken place not long before this illness) Auntie Lulu had given him a cute little teddy bear - similar in size and colour to Lambie - and it was a welcome substitute while Lambie had a wash.

Of course after a couple of days, after Lambie was cleaned up and dried out he was gratefully received and poor Berlin (the name given to the little teddy - that's another story) went back to a day time friend to play with rather than night time cuddling buddy.

There has been a couple of times since then that Lambie has needed a wash and Berlin has had to fill the void, but each time we have had to give Lambie a wash Peanut has been less and less willing to do the soft toy swap. In fact the last time that tried to give him Berlin instead of Lambie, Peanut smacked it from M34tb4LL's hand and he took twice as long to settle down to sleep!!!

So a plan was hatched, to get a few more lambs so we could have one in the wash, one on stand by and Peanut could have one with him. I asked Auntie Lulu when she got the lamb from, and if she could look to see if she can get another one or two (or three or four) for Peanut. She went looking in every store she could to for another one of those lambs but with no luck.

I then emailed the Australian distributors of the company to see if they knew where i might be able to find some more, they were of no help. So I broadened my search to the whole world, thanks to a little local store I know called the Internet. And it took quite some searching, but I found a couple of sites that had the lamb for sale. However all the sites that had the toy listed were in America.

Now I'm not a stranger to getting the odd trinket from overseas, and with the exchange rate the way it is at the moment, getting the toy from overseas was a more than reasonable option.

I tried to place an order from the site that had the lamb at the best price, but i got an email from them saying that they didn't have any of the soft toys and that they are a discontinued item and will not be getting any stock in the future. So i started emailed a few of the sites that listed the lamb for sale, asking if they actually had any lambs in stock.

After about two weeks of random searching and emailing i got an email from one store based in Texas saying that they had the lambs in stock and they could post to Australia if i emailed my address. So i placed an order, sent an email agreeing to pay extra for postage to Australia and confirming my postage address.

And low and behold, in just over a week, a package arrived containing four identical little lambs. Let the lamb swapping commence!



So do you get the title? Army of darkness? The lambs are for Peanut to cuddle in his sleep - he sleeps in the dark - we now have a small army of lambs... Sorry!

(: Reggie

Sunday 6 April 2008

Do babies dream of miniture sheep?

Peanut has his 'night night' routine, and i must admit i have played with it a little to see what would happen. The current routine is -
  • change into pyjamas
  • have a milk feed
  • say goodnight to Daddy (and if we have visitors - them as well)
  • cuddles into Lambie (his favourite soft toy lamb)
  • then we put him on his back in his cot
  • pull up the covers
  • say night night sleep tight
  • leave the room
He will then kick off the covers, turn around and flip over - mind you he does not let go of Lambie!!!

M34tb4LL asked me the other day if i have tried to put Peanut in cot more in the position that he seems to be more comfortable sleeping in, saving him the trouble of doing the whole turning around and over and stuff. I have, but it just seemed to make him upset and it took him longer to settle down so he could go to sleep!

If there is one thing I have figured out about our Peanut, he likes his bed time routine as it is - and he likes to get himself comfortable by himself!!!

Before we go to bed we always look in at Peanut for a few seconds and for those of you that keep tabs on Peanuts youtube account will know he is a bit of noisy sleeper. Plus he is a real wriggler - he moves around a lot while he is asleep. So do people (Peanut is people) move around in their sleep because they are not 100% comfortable? Or because of the dreams they are having!!!

And that makes me wonder, what do babies dream about? Dreams tend to draw references from all elements of the whole world around us and a baby's experience of the world is limited.

Mind you, it does amaze me how much Peanut seems to take in, and how fast he is learning about the world around him. So does he dream about things that they may have seen but is yet to understand? Or are his dream completely random and abstract? These are questions that we will probably never be able to answer!

Now, who of you thought that by the title of the this post I was going to make all sorts of 'Blade Runner' references?

(: Reggie