Since Kaia was just shy of two years old, she started developing an attachment to her Peter Rabbit stuffed animal. Prior to that, she did not care about any stuffed animal at all. Peter Rabbit traveled with us to multiple places, always at Kaia’s side. Then, she eventually got bored of him and stopped caring. She goes in and out with attachments to random stuffed animals she has, whether it’s Lychee, her rainbow build-a-bear, Irene, her teething bunny stuffed animal, or Simon, a monkey that Chris’s friend got her this last Australia visit. But I’d say that since October of last year, when Chris introduced her to her cow costume for Halloween, that’s when she REALLY got attached to something. That cow costume goes all over this apartment, and she oftentimes will snuggle and sleep with it. When she comes over to our bed at some point in the night, she always, always drags the cow costume over, as well.

Last night, she dragged the cow costume to our bed but forgot about Irene at around 5am when she came over. And she started whining, “Irene! Irene! I want Irene!” She says this expecting that I will go grab it for her. So, I do the mommy thing and go to her room and grab Irene. And then she snuggles both and falls asleep in our bed, right between us, until about 7am.

It’s really cute and sweet to see her attachments to these objects, these “friends” who give her comfort. It’s always a little adventure to see what attachments she has, lets go of, and what she moves onto. It’s one of the little joys of watching her grow up and evolve that I love observing.