If you've been following Mommy Shorts, you know that Mazzy's got a blankie named Boo (pictured top left). (You can read all about Boo here.)
Shortly after I gave birth, I read that having a security blanket makes it easier for babies to acclimate to strange places. Like outside on the street when you can't get them to stop crying. (For the record, I've only done that once.) I also read that if the security blanket smells like mom, it's easier for the baby to attach themselves to it.
I'm telling you this so you understand why I made the moronic decision of making Mazzy's blankie out of two old t-shirts of mine. (More on that later.)
Mazzy and Boo are inseparable. If I had to list the things in Mazzy's life that she could not live without in order of necessity, Boo would be at the very top. That means Boo is above Elmo, her pacifier and myself. Which hopefully illustrates the obscene level of attachment. (Although I think pretzels and the iPad would be above myself as well, so maybe it's not saying much.)
Boo helps put Mazzy to bed, assists in spontaneous meltdown deflection, acts as her companion on car rides and generally encourages a favorable disposition at all times.
Which is great!
That is, until Boo started dying.
You see— Mazzy loves Boo. But she does little to think of his well-being other than he must be on her person at all times. She drags him on the floor, she throws him out of her stroller onto the city streets and she chews on him like he's a piece of rawhide. And since Boo is basically a makeshift sew-job of two old rags, he was a goner from the get-go.
(This is where you begin to understand why creating a homemade one-of-a-kind Boo is moronic.)
Death started with a hole in the seam and quickly escalated into a complete unraveling of one entire side. Then holes started forming in places where seams don't exist— a telltale sign the Blankie Reaper is near.
Legend of The Blankie Reaper:
The Blankie Reaper lives in the washing machine, so blankie death will almost certainly arrive mid-wash. When the reaper is feeling particularly grim, he has been known to disintegrate a blankie entirely leaving barely a trace that it ever existed. Some say, if you listen closey to the spin cycle, you can hear the sound of blankie-less children screaming.
Thus, a plan to create a replacement Boo was born.
The Task: Replicate Boo as closely as possible so that Mazzy is unable to detect a difference.
The Execution: Two t-shirts were purchased from American Apparel because that was where the originals were from (although several years prior). Colors were matched as best as I could find. Materials were taken to the same dry cleaner and sewed together exactly like the original.
The Result: IMPOSTER BOO (see visual up top)
How It Went Down (Note: I did not mean to leave "Original Boo" on top of the table. Thankfully, Mike saved the plan from disaster):
RIP Original Boo from Ilana W on Vimeo.
In case the video isn't clear, "Imposter Boo" is a big success. So successful that we dropped "Imposter" and are now just calling him— "Boo".
Also, I'm now wondering if my replacement would be equally as easy.
Next plan: "Robot Mom".
Aw, RIP Boo!!
Congratulations on the successful replacement operation. I wouldn’t know what to do if God forbid, Monkey’s blankie were to meet a similar demise. Fortunately, I bought a backup before he was old enough to tell the difference (they are from the same place, same texture, size, color, but different pictures on them). So I can wash them now, regularly.
I love the video, Mazzy’s so cute!
Bye Bye Boo!
We have a teddy, 13 years later, yes, 13, it still sits on her bed. It arrived in a flower arrangement from our favorite restaurant (clearly we gave them lots of business!)
I learned with the next child to constantly rotate whatever she was sleeping with. She will probably never have a monogamous relationship now – and it will be my fault!
My oldest son is still very much attached to “Mankie” and he’ll be nine next month. We were fortunate enough to get a copy of the original so it could be washed. That thing gets stinky–but it gives him so much comfort.
Eek–my Kiddo is 7 1/2 and STILL has his blankie. Luckily I bought a second the second I realized how attached he was (and when I realized he wouldn’t even uncurl his fingers from in when he was deeply asleep and it was covered with spit-up).
Good luck with the New Boo. Maybe you should make another back-up…just in case…
cheers.
VB
Way to go Mike! Excellent manuever – not sure my own hubs would have thought of that! LOVED the video, died laughing when the song cued up!
What a great contribution to Boo at the end. I’d say Daddy saved the day definitely…now you really need to get him a doozy for Father’s Day! By the way, where would you get the materials to build a robot Mom?
From the first post about Boo, I went about making the baby his own blanket out of old t-shirts.
So far, I have successfully cut up two old tanks. The scraps are still sitting on my dresser, the large pieces are underneath my bed.
I think I missed the point.
I can tell you T-shirts are preferable to knitted “boos,” those are only marginally washable, and when they get chewed on… well you can only hold a pile of yarn together so long.
Wait – did I also see you took away the binkie recently too? You are one tough mama! Congrats on the boo replacement operation. To this day, my sister is still suspicious that my mother threw out her blankey. My mother claims the washing machine ate it. We will never know…
hahaha OMG i LOVE the kick in to the song at the end of the video! perfect!
Hilarious. One of my kids had a thumb. The other loved a particular kind of tag in the back of shirts. Gap tags, I think. Both grown, and fairly normal.
You might want to invest in a few more “new” boos and keep them in a rotation so no one boo gets too worn out. When she gets older she will be harder to fool and this new boo won’t last forever! (PS I know adults who still have whats left of their teddy or their boo under their pillow)
Wow, I am impressed! I’m not sure if either of my daughters would accept an imposter (actually, I KNOW my 4yo won’t). Kudos to Mike! I hope you saved original Boo. 🙂
My son has a lovey that he calls “Suh” (no idea why, he started calling him that at about 10 months old and it has stuck for the past year and a half). He first became attached to him when he was about 8 months old. I of course tried for find a second duplicate lovey for him…unfortunately, they no longer made the same one. I did find one on ebay (new). I paid an outrageous amount of money for that thing and immediately tried to give it to Jack (after a few washings to rough him up a little). No such luck. He could immediately tell the difference and threw a huge fit. Now, “suh” is worn and comfy…he won’t take the new one if you paid him in candy and unicorns. I fear for the day that “Suh” meets his demise…I only hope it comes long after Jack stops needing him for comfort!
The video is simply brilliant.:)
Goodbye old boo. Good thing Mike was there to save the day and convince her the imposter boo was better.
Oh this is so precious.
Love the video!!
My sister did something very similar. One night her infant son was crying and just wanted her to hold him. At some point she was so exhausted that she took off her t-shirt (A Toad The Wet Sprocket concert t-shirt) and gave it to him. He fell fast asleep and thus created his new blanket. The next morning she cut a big section out of it and that became his blankie. The blankie deteriorated over the years and became a single strip of fabric….and then that piece looked like it was going to die and my sister freaked out. She went on ebay and found the same concert t-shirt and attempted to make several new strips of “blankie” so that she would have back-ups.
I learned from her mistake. I, too, made my own blanket for my son, but went out and bought a ton of fabric and ribbon and made a couple blankets. He isn’t as attached to his blanket as many kids are, but he does like to sleep with it. In fact, on my list of to-dos today is to finish making more blankets for him and to make the blankets for our baby due in a month. 🙂
Loved the video! How funny. Glad she took to “Imposter Boo”!
My daughter had a ‘Lovie’ that she loved and I learned the hard way that when your kid loves something, you always buy 2 or 4 in our case.
Glad it all worked out.
Since the replacement operation, Mazzy has started pointing at random pieces of purple clothing and shouting— “BOO!” So it’s a success beyond my wildest dreams.
Next kid, I am definitely getting a store bought Boo. In multiple!
I just love the term “Mankie”. It sounds like a blankie given to a kid by his “Manny”.
The Boo pictured was actually lost about two days after the replacement. A new Boo was born with much less attention to detail and she is still fine. But yes, I should have a bunch on hand.
You are incredibly brave for even considering doing this!!! Monster’s ‘deedle’ is treated like gold around here, because I can’t, for the life of me, find a replacement. I’ve found plenty of close seconds…but they can’t stop the tears like Deedle can.
🙂
My first song choice was “I Will Remember You” by Sarah McLachlan. But I knew it was the wrong choice when it actually made me choke back tears. Bon Jovi works much better.
I am currently sourcing Robot Mom materials. You can pretty much buy everything at Home Depot. Now. If only I was friends with one of those robot vacuum programmers.
I am glad I inspired you to create an unfinished project.
And now you can feel comfortable in its incompletion.
Let me know if I can be of service for anything else.
Since I regularly pick carpet lint off of Mazzy’s tongue while fighting the urge to gag, I concur that knitted “Boos” are not the way to go.
My blog is usually a couple weeks behind my actual life. Particularly when there is video involved. So yes, we are now in the process of ridding Mazzy of her pacifier. But I did not attempt to do them at once. I’M NOT INSANE!!!!
I know you’re kids are older, so you probably don’t know that they now make whole toys made up entirely of those tags because they know kids love them.
When I was little I had a blankie that I loved so much. After noticing the attachment, and my penchant for misplacing it, my mom cut it up and stashed pieces in her diaper bag, in a kitchen drawer, in my bedroom. (Somehow, the pieces were just fine with me.) Anyway, I lost them piece by piece. When I was about 3, I only had one piece left. My mom says that one night she heard the toilet flush in the middle of the night, followed by heart-broken sobs. That’s right: the blankie reaper’s brother lives in the toilet, and it was that jerk who got the last piece.
I don’t know what I’m more impressed with – your amazing mothering skills or your amazing music edit.
The “In Memorium” part at the end was hysterical!
RIP Boo! Glad the switch went so well. Good job mama!
Your dry cleaner is one talented sucker.
Wow.. CONGRATULATIONS!
I say that as the mama of a 4yo – who resisted all of the replaceable-I-can-buy-another loveys when she was a baby and attached herself to a (at the time) 3 yo stuffed kitty from the dollar store. We now joke it is franken-kitty because I have resorted to sewing on patches of fabric over the holes…
Luckly (?) baby boy has formed no lovey attachments yet.
So glad this worked! Smart mama!
And Mazzy is so stinking cute! I think my youngest would be in love if I let him watch this video.
is it weird that i both laughed and cried about this?
my mom had to pry my quickly disintegrating blankie from my 3rd grade hands. she still keeps a remnant of it in her cedar closet.
Great video! As a former-NJ girl, I was VERY excited that you chose Bon Jovi 🙂
UPDATE! IMPOSTER BOO HAS BEEN LOST!
Luckily, we still have Original Boo’s carcass, so that’s what Mazzy is sleeping with tonight.
Tomorrow, many many Boos will be created.
Yes, see above. I was surprised it was as easy as it was. Sometimes, I may give Mazzy too much credit. Babies can be fooled.
Okay. The following information was in the post originally but I took it out because it’s embarrassing.
IMPOSTER BOO COST $50.
T-shirts at American Apparel are $20 a piece (I needed two because Boo is two different shades of purple) and the dry cleaner (who sewed the original for free) charged me $10 this time around.
Don’t say it. I know.
I will be making more Boos tomorrow. I might even have to learn to sew so I don’t run through our entire life savings tailoring t-shirts into blankies.
I love your sister’s story. Toad the Wet Sprocket is just about the most random band ever.
It was done out of necessity. But seriously, it was so much easier than I imagined. Maybe Monster is not as particular as you fear?
For instance, in the video, I totally caved and was ready to call it a day but Mike fixed it easily.
You never know.
I didn’t know the blankie reaper had a brother! Thank you for warning me— I will look for him the next time I go to the bathroom.
Ha! Of course, you would notice my music edit. It had to go straight from instrumental to the chorus to work, which never happens in the actual song. Thank god for years of our lives lost in editing bays!
I need a picture of Franken-Kitty please.
She is rather irresistible, isn’t she?
Not weird. You should have seen it with “I will remember you” by Sarah McLachlan on the end. No laughter. Just tears. I promptly changed it.
So was my husband.
Great work… some babes would so not be interested in the new Boo. My son has two comforters with bear heads. They are the same colour, but different sizes and slightly different heads. I wash one and he’s quite happy with the other – no probs. My daughter on the other hand, would never have a “boo”. I tried and tried, but all she ever wanted was me… bring on the robot mum!!
This makes me so thankful we have a mass-produced lovey – endless replacement opportunities.
This post is actually eerily similar to one I just finished writing about my kid’s Lambie. So, if/when you read it in the near future, I din’t rip your idea off, yo.
Still laughing at hearing the cries of blankie-less children in the spin cycle. And now I want to put on some Bon Jovi.
This was precious and made me tear up and I’m an asshole, so that’s something. My firstborn had a satin-edged blankie he carried, but if it was in the wash or misplaced, I discovered anything with a satin texture would do–a piece of ribbon, a pair of my dirty underwear, he didn’t care. My second child, however, was attached to his one and only blanket, so like you, I thought it would be a good idea to have a backup. I bought the same blanket, laundered them both at the same time, but he could tell the difference. Sometimes he could be tricked for a moment if he came across the imposter lying on the floor, but once he picked it up and put it to his cheek, he would jerk away, look at it as if it were a snake and fling it to the floor. Glad Mazzy is happy with her new Boo.
The Bon Jovi song about killed me.
Rest in peace, Boo 1 (and Boo 2?).
Well, this turned out way better than the time we bird-sat for my grandmother, and when both birds died we replaced them with impostor birds, and then one of the impostors died and I think we just threw a bunch of cotton balls in the cage and called it good.
p.s. Safari told me it was spelled “impostor” which seems wrong but I cannot ignore spellcheck.
That is pretty much the most BRILLIANT idea, ever. I think that making a blanket from a few old t-shirts is a fantastic idea. Because you can always go out and replace said t-shirts for a new blanket. My son got attached to a security blanket when he was a few months old, and when it started to fall apart we couldn’t find another one like it ANYWHERE. It was a disaster. Thankfully, now he has a dog he carries, but when it dies, I’m not sure what we’ll do. I’ll definitely be giving the t-shirt blanket a go. New to your blog…stopping by from Things I can’t Say! Love it!