Black bobby grew up.

Last night was the most horrible bedtime ever! Shelby did not want to go to sleep and didn't want to lay in her bed, and Jeff and I had such a hard time with it.
Shelby ended up giving up, after we took her back into her bed without speaking to her a la SuperNanny about a gajillion bazillion times, and slept on her floor. Amidst all that mess, I kept thinking about how we'd lost her precious bobby and that she would probably be going to bed readily if she had her best friend in the world there to comfort her. After all Bobby had been through....being left at the Pumpkin Patch only to be picked up by us hours later, being dropped in the toilet, left at school all alone at night, resulting in tears from Shelby... he ended up going missing one day and never seen again. We think it might have been at Albertson's that he was last seen, but we're not sure. We only knew that we couldn't mention him being gone because of the heartbreak it would bring to Shelby. We had to just let him fade from her memory, and let other little stuffed animals like Penny, Missy, Val, and Lammie try to fill the void. But Bobby was the only ever TRUE lovie that Shelby had, and he always seemed to bring her comfort that no other thing could. I had been thinking of him more and more lately, and had been so sad knowing that he was gone and we wouldn't have him to keep in the top of a closet for years and years, and to pull him down when Shelby had a baby of her own, like my Grandpa Rabbit and Jeff's train conductor dog named Joe. Last night I was thinking of Bobby even more as Shelby's bedtime fit ensued, and I remembered the other bobby we have. He was dubbed "Shoo wee bobby" or "Eyes bobby" by Shelby because I bought him as a backup after the other Bobby had been thoroughly broken in with love, and he was new and plump and didn't have the whites of his eyes scratched off from when she was a teething baby like the Real Bobby did. Poor ShooWee Bobby, Shelby wanted nothing to do with him. So last night during the bedtime debacle, I found this Shoo Wee/Eyes Bobby, all new with the pretty white eyes, and I scratched those damn eyes off. I scratched as hard and fast as I could, motivated by my sad screaming little girl who needed her Bobby. No, she wasn't crying for him but I knew he would have been able to make everything ok if he were in her arms. But, I couldn't give him to her last night. I had to be very careful in making sure she didn't know that this was the shoo wee bobby in disguise. Instead, after his eyes were nice and Black, I put him in the washer. I put him through 3 heavy cycles to try to wear him out. I dried him, and got him out this morning. He still wasn't worn out like the other Bobby was from 2 years of ShelbyLove, but he was a little less puffy and looked not quite so brand new. I grabbed him from the dryer and headed into Shelby's room this morning. She was laying there with her eyes open, and they sure did brighten when she saw "black bobby" in my arms. She grabbed him and started giggling, but she was still a little hesitant. She really studied him, turning him over and smelling him and holding his eyes right up to her eyes, as I stood there in suspense. Is she going to love him or throw him off, knowing he's really the "Shoo wee Bobby?" Finally, a huge smile broke on her face and she giggled some more. She said, "Is this black bobby mommy?" and I told her it was. It wasn't a lie, since he was technically now Black Bobby, with black eyes, no whites left on them. She smiled and said, "Bobby grew up mommy!" Haha, she noticed that he was bigger and puffier than the last time she had seen him, but she concluded that he must have grown up, since it was in fact the same Bobby- it had to be--- just look at his eyes!!! The eyes that were furiously scratched away with mommy's love only 12 hours before!!

Long live Black Bobby!!!

In the beginning:


Near the end: