Puppy

OK, I know I promised to write about our holidays -- and didn't do that.

Instead, I'll tell you a story about Simi's puppy. About five years ago, for Simi's first Christmas, his aunt and uncle gifted him a beanie-baby puppy and a beenie-baby frog. I put them in the crib with Simi; he was just a couple of months old at the time. (Putting stuffed animals in the crib with your infant is now considered a dangerous practice, but at the time it was a perfectly acceptable thing to do.) Over a short period of time, Simi developed an attachment to the puppy (he never thought anything of the frog) and he still, to this day, carries the puppy around with him everywhere he goes. Puppy has become so important that he wears an id tag around his neck with our phone numbers so that we can have a better chance of recovering him if he becomes lost.

A few years ago we told Simi the story of the Velveteen Rabbit. You know the story: the little boy loved the stuffed bunny he received as a Christmas present so much that it became worn and thread-bare. It was the little boy's love that made the Velveteen Rabbit become a real one.
After reading the story, we told Simi that his puppy was like the Velveteen Rabbit and that, one day, it would become real. Of course, we have been hoping that Puppy wouldn't become real for another 10 years or so...

Puppy is showing the signs of five years of being carried around by Simi. He developed a hole in his nose and the little plastic beads have been falling out. Over our Christmas (see, we are getting around to the Christmas part of the story) break, I found some of the plastic bead stuffing and fixed up puppy. He is now plumper than ever and his holes are all sewn up. We still need to sew back his mouth and nose, which seems to have disappeared over time and because of the repair. But Simi doesn't seem to care.

Here is a photo of a happy Simi and Puppy post repair. Hopefully puppy will last another five years or so.