won't leave home without it, part 2

The past few days, Elliott has kept his American Express card with him practically everywhere he goes. Ok, that's not totally true, he keeps it with him at home, but when we are out and about at the playground or the library, he tends to lose it when he gets distracted by sticks, toys, or other kids. After we leave a place, if he gets fussy, I just hand it back to him and he's cool again. I know I am encouraging his behavior of keeping this thing with him, but I can't help it. It's freakin' adorable the way he treasures this thing. - the way he crawls around with it and will stop to adjust his grip, the way he tries to shove it into every crevice or practices throwing it on the tile floor and picking it up again and again, the way he constantly rotates it three times in his hands making me think he might be developing some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder, and the way he holds it up in the air and yells like he just found some sort of holy grail thingie. Last night, just out of curiousity, we put it in his crib and this morning when Dan went to get him, Elliott had it in his hand ready to start the day. It was the same thing for his nap today as well. I am just amazed that at his age he feels such an attachment to something and is responsible enough to keep it with him for the majority of the day.

In the many, many sleep books that we have read, they all mention getting your child attached to a lovey. A lovey is some object that your child holds most valuable and can be associated with going to sleep or security. That way, instead of associating you with sleep, your kid associates this object with sleep so that in the middle of the night when they wake up, if they have this object with them, they'll be able to go back to sleep on their own. Most kids have a stuffed animal or a security blanket that serves this purpose for them. We tried to get Elliott attached to a blanket or a stuffed animal, but no dice. We always joked that Elliott's lovey would be some sort of hard plastic or metal toy. I really didn't think that it would be a small plastic card.

So of course, we would discover that Elliott's lovey is a fake credit card that you get in the mail AFTER we call the number that takes you off the mailing lists for all these credit card companies. Luckily, we each got one of these cards in the mail, so we have a hot spare in case one gets lost, but the freak in me is starting to worry about when we lose the second one. So I'm putting out a request to all our friends and family and anyone else that stumbles on this blog: If you get an American Express credit card offer in the mail that comes with a fake credit card and that credit card is clear with a blue square in the middle like this one:



will you please save it for Elliott? Let me know and I will send you a postage paid envelope for you to mail it to him. I'd like to create a stockpile of these things to last at least until the 2nd grade. Of course, as soon as I put this request out there, Elliott will abandon the card and we will get swamped with them. But whatever. It'll be fun while it lasts.