(Nothing, I mean nothing stands between my kid and her favourite “sarong” when it comes to bedtime which soon follows suite once she had her milk. We usually bring backups in case we misplace her favourite sarong)
Ha, I am sure everyone has his / hers favourite blanket or pillow when they were small. I can’t recall if I had one when I was small (I don’t think so) but my sister had her “bantal busuk” (pillow) even after she had grown up. One day, my mom had to throw it away after the pillow had turned black in colour despite many attempts to wash it. We were convinced that it would have made a great place for virologists to discover new species.
My son still have his favourite blanket that we got for him when he was months old baby. What used to be a dark orange large piece of blanket has turned into a very faded, washed out, torn in several pieces blanket. Last year we decided to give him a proper replacement – a similar in colour & type of blanket but despite that, he still keeps his old blanket on his bed before he can go to sleep.
He also folds the small pieces neatly in the morning. Even after we had set the bed for him, he will still hunt for his old blanket high and low and he make sure he goes to bed with all pieces. The new blanket would often be on the floor and his old blanket firmly in his hands by the time he is fast asleep. After all, he had been sleeping with his old blanket for the past 8 – 9 years. So I guess it will take some time before he gets over the old blanket and warm up to the new blanket.
Not to be left out, his sister is also following up closely on the blanket business but with a different twist. Instead of a normal blanket, she opted for “sarong”. The one that she remembers as a baby (and for us, she is still a baby), cradling on her grandfather’s sarong (that’s my dad) and my Dad has a lot of blue themed sarongs.
So when we got her a proper blanket, she went for the blue themed sarong instead. We tried several times to get her used to the blanket but every time we do that, she still opt for the blue themed sarong (and over time, opt for any soft sarongs). So it was clear where she was going with the choice of her favourite “blanket”.
So what my wife decided to do is to buy a few blue themed sarongs for my daughter (for main use and backups) and my grandmother (yes, she still comes over on the weekend to see her favourite great grand child) decided to cut it smaller and sew it into a more manageable size. That in the sense where my daughter would carry it around without tripping over it.
And it did not take long before she becomes closely attached to the sarong and it has comes to a point where she sometimes needs more than one sarong when she goes to sleep – one in each hand. Then something very sweet happens – she would hold the sarong close to her mouth and her mouth curls up. She licks her lips and soon falls deep in sleep.
And because of this, we sometimes get into deep trouble especially when we forget to bring along her sarong when we go out with her. She will go hyper crazy if she cannot hold her sarong when she wants to go to sleep and my car has been one good spot to sleep – with the “cool” air conditioner and the “soothing” background music (same thing with my son when he was young).
She want to sleep but without her sarong by her side, it is still not complete. She jumps all of the place and my wife could not get her to sit down in one place. But once reach home and the moment she grabs her sarong, her mouth would curl up and she would look for a spot to sleep.