I Want My Lambie Blanket

Abbie still plays her fetch game while reading. That’s the one where she sees an object in the book, and has to fetch the corresponding object in real life. If she sees a dog, she has to grab her stuffed dog. If she sees a ball, she has to grab one of her many balls. If she sees a child cleaning her plate nicely at mealtime, she turns the page in search of something she recognizes.

She started the fetch game several months ago, I think picking it up during speech therapy. The therapists would try to make her say simple words such as “ball.” Being unable to make a “b” sound, she had two options: Focus all her energies on learning to contort her mouth into the proper shapes needed to speak the English language, or find a way to distract us. She still hasn’t figured out how to make a “b” sound, but she does know how to distract us by fetching a ball upon hearing the word.

Soon she was applying this principle to reading, fetching a ball when she sees a picture of a ball. This probably represents a milestone where she understood that pictures in books represent tangible objects, and aren’t just pretty pages for her to remove after repeatedly bending them in just the right direction.

She’s lost some interest in the fetch game recently. She’s found things to do with her books that are more exciting, such as reading them aloud. Not that she’s actually reading the words; it’s more like reciting the words that she remembers and making up sounds when needed, but it’s still a pretty cool trick for a girl who can’t say the word “baba.” She’ll still play it occasionally, though, especially when it involves stuffed animals.

Such was the case yesterday as we read one of our many books of first words. We turned the page to “animals,” and she started fetching. We point to the cat, and she fetches her stuffed cat. We point to the duck, and she fetches all three stuffed ducks that she’s commandeered even though two of them are supposed to belong to her brothers. We point to the lamb, and she rises to fetch her lambie blanket.

Except, lambie blanket was gone. In my zeal for running the washing machine yesterday morning, I threw her lambie blanket and the boys’ cow blankets in the wash. Washing them is perilous since the boys need them to sleep. I have to throw them in the machine on the days when I’m motivated to wash a load right after they wake so they’ll have time to dry before naptime. Considering the boys drool on them in their sleep, I should wash them frequently, but I’m not sufficiently motivated often, so I have to wash them when the opportunity arises.

Abbie cared naught for this; she wanted her lambie blanket. She can sleep without it, possibly because she sleeps with so many other plush objects that she’d never realize it’s missing. Point to a picture of a lamb, though, and her life stops until she finds lambie blanket.

I tried moving to the next animal, but she had no time for reading while lambie blanket was missing. Then I explained that lambie blanket was taking a bath, and it would be return to her when it was clean. This seemed to register with her as she slowed long enough to consider the logistics of lambie blanket taking a bath, maybe lathering up its hair, possibly using a towel to dry its blanket body. And then she went back to searching for it. Her baths never take that long, so its bath shouldn’t take long either.

She gave up after a couple more minutes of searching. She may have realized that lambie blanket’s bath was going to take a while. Or, a brother trying to read a book may have distracted her. Dominating the books is another favorite game of hers.