UPDATE: About Bear Bear's Recovery.

In my last post, I told you about Bear Bear's misfortunes (and how enraged I was that those he was entrusted to were not more responsible). It still amazes me that some people... some parents... seem to have no understanding of or respect for the attachment that a three-year-old can have for a beloved stuffed animal.

For some kids, it's a blanket or a pacifier, or a shirt. For M, it's her bear bear. As I mentioned before, she's had him since before she could stand. She picked him out at Target in Hawaii by grabbing him instead of a couple of other animals I was offering her. If he had been alive, she would have strangled him instantly considering the force with which she shoved his soft, furry head into her face. I didn't think much of it at the time. I figured she didn't even realize she was making a choice. Now, about three years later, she will accept no substitutes. She won't even have a brand new, soft, furry copy of the same bear that I found on Ebay. She must have her raggedy old bear. (I should start calling him The Doctor).

Well, while he was away, he was mauled by a German Shepherd with a known stuffed animal mauling problem. I was informed of this in the first text I got from their daddy after he took them to Colorado Springs. My heart sank.

For me... sadness and disappointment of this type often turns to a near rage. I paced and ranted about this being such a stupid thing for him to have allowed and what a tragedy it was. Admittedly, this was fueled at least in part by how much I missed my beloved security animal when my grandparents left it behind at a hotel when I was a kid.

Yes, I always blame these incidences on the adults who were present at the time. Can you really hold a three-year-old accountable for leaving her bear bear unattended in a house with a known stuffed animal predator? She generally can't even remember where she left him when bed time comes around and he's not in her bed.

I guess I should get to the point, which is: Bear bear turned out... okay. I didn't see his wounds before they were mended. I know he was missing his tail and tag from the previous trip with daddy, when the same German Shepherd attacked him. She loved his tag and still rubs her face on the spot where it once was. Now he's a bit shorter and thinner due to reconstructive surgery performed by the girls' great grandma. He apparently lost some fabric and some filling in the war.

The bear on the left in the top picture is "new bear", the exact bear bear replica I found on Ebay, when I was worried that bear bear would soon fall apart. She has hardly touched "new bear" and seems to find him inferior to bear bear.

When he was returned, in the arms of his beloved person, bear bear still had a 3/4-inch run in the fabric on his chest. That bit was barely held together by the few, tiny, remaining threads of fabric. To prevent future disaster, I got M's permission to sew a patch over his little heart... a little, red-velvet, heart-shaped patch.

She loved the idea. And now the raggedy bear bear is a new man.