THE Blue Bear

This is Blue Bear. Not a blue bear, his name is Blue Bear. I know, how does one ever configure a name such as this? Now, you may recognize this as a care bear. It is, and Aunt Lindsay gave it to Aiden when he was just a few weeks old. Below is a picture of Aiden in the NICU at Children's Hospital before he was stable enough to move to an incubator. Blue Bear was the first stuffed animal Aiden ever had, it was in his isolette with him in the NICU and it goes everywhere with him to this day. Avery has a couple of special items, but I've never seen anything like Aiden's attachment to Blue Bear. They have a lot in common, too. Aiden had laser eye surgery on both of his eyes (twice on one eye) and surgery on his bowel. As you can see, Blue is in desperate need of eye surgery- he has no semblance of eyes left. He has had a stomach transplant; a selfless hacky-sack gave its life, so that Blue Bear could have a stomach again. You see, he had a tear in the seam and lost so many beads, we needed a donor. Luckily there are toys with organ donor cards out there. It was touch and go for a while though. He had stitches another time and has had two tag replacements. Aiden likes to play with the tag on the back, you know the one that you usually tear off? Well, I am big fan of structure and routine, some may use the term obsessive-compulsive, but hey, tomAto, tomOto. However, my children may have inherited some of these traits-Aiden has a routine in the morning, he sits on the couch, with the lights off, drinks a glass of milk and plays with the tag. The lights have to be off, he has to sit on his specific spot on the couch, and his sippy has to be completely full. He completely wore the original tag to a few threads and we had to sew on a new one. Then, that one wore out and we had to sew on another one.

Now, I had a brilliant idea a few years ago. I went out a bought another care bear just in case something happened to the original. I know, genius. Then, I tried it out. "Mom, this isn't Blue Bear," he said very matter-of-factly. I would challenge anyone else to have tried to notice a difference back then. He could tell. So, we know have Blue Bear, and "Other Blue." That's actually his name-"Other Blue." I think it's endearing that he loves his bear so much, it brings him comfort and it's neat that he's had it since the beginning. But we're nearing 5 and 1/2 now. As long as he doesn't take it to kindergarten...
(Below is Aiden, followed by Avery with the red bow, shortly after they were born)