Snuggle Buggle

You've heard about Snuggle Buggle. He's featured here before. He's actually not a bug, at all. He's a rhino, with a stuffed head and a limp body. When Theresa was... I don't know 7 or 8 months or so, she was going through, what the books called "separation anxiety". The book recommended providing her with something to cuddle when you left her in her bed, so that she wouldn't be so upset and still go to sleep. You see, until that time, she had been happy to go to sleep without me around. Then all of a sudden... literally, suddenly, she cried and cried and cried when I left the room.

So I carefully inspected the choice of dolls and stuffed animals before me. There's the jingly white doll girl. No thanks, sorry. Not the right colour for us. The white dog. He would get too dirty to quick. The knitted doll... my creative side thought she wasn't quite cute enough... terrible I know. But the little French Snuggle Buggle... well, not only was he small and compact, he was blue (I'm not really into the whole girl=pink, boy = blue thing. Theresa looks good in blue dresses.), wouldn't get to dirty, and looked kind of cuddly in a limp sort of way.

So Snuggle Buggle became the one.

Actually, the only one. She gives the odd cuddle here and there to another toy, but really, nothign compares with her S.B. as her dad affectionately calls him.

If Theresa had it her way, S.B. would follow her everywhere, although, like all dollies ( as the Solomon Islanders call him), he is eventually dumped on the ground for something else.

However, I don't want her to become this thumb sucking three year old with an awful blue, well, actually, brown by then, rag attached to the crook of her arm. So some or most of the time, when Theresa is awake, Snuggle Buggle stays tucked right in the corner of the bed where she can't quite reach him. But that's ok. He does come to Church with us, which makes Theresa promptly suck her thumb, holding on tight to her friend.

Anyway, the cute thing that happened with S. B. today is this:

You see, S. B. came in a set with a towel and a face cloth. The face cloth picture of him is green, but on the towel, there's this cute image of Snuggle Buggle. When Theresa saw her towel hanging in the bathroom today, she recognised her favourite friend.

I thought it was so cute. And evidence of how much she is growing up and understanding things now.

But, she won't for a long long time to come, be too grown up for her Snuggle Buggle.