ode to bunny

K came to me very upset because her best friend pictured above had developed a few holes. I have secretly dubbed him "Frankenbunny" due to his many surgeries. Bunny is a member of our household but, quite frankly, I haven't really looked at him in a while. Poor bunny has seen better days. But I was reminded of something that I haven't thought of in a while...the day he and K helped me in a time of need.

When she was 3 months old, Kailey received Bunny as a gift from my sister. He was soft and pale pink and had "My First Bunny" stitched on his belly and some sort of jingle mechanism embeddeded in his fluff. I have a picture of them just after he was given to her, and she is holding him, I bet any money, if I went into her room right now at 12:08 a.m. five years later, the same way - four right fingers curled around his ear and her thumb in her mouth. They became inseparablele.

By the time she was two, poor Bunny had begun to fade into a grey color and the fur began to matt and flatten. He was her best friend and an instant tantrum stopper. Just hand her Bunny, and she would grasp his ears, her thumb would slide into her mouth, her eyes would half close, and all would be well. She couldn't sneak up on you because you would hear Bunny jingle before she could even get close. Then Bunny developed his own smell. Its kind of amazing, I don't think anything had ever or will ever again smell like Bunny. A mixture of Kailey and Bunny, it wasn't a bad smell exactly- just it's own smell.

He was looking pretty bad, so we tried to find bunny substitutes to no avail. We could not find a duplicate. We checked the internet, called the manufacturer, everything. No. So we tried replacement bunnies. The first was a slightly smaller pink bunny that had the exact same jingle but was equipped with satin wings. She really seemed to like him but when I tried to make the replacement at bed time, it was a no go. She wanted both bunnies- My Bunny and Angel Bunny as she dubbed them. The next candidate had real potential. It was shaped differently but, again was pink and had the jingle. Same story. She wanted the whole Bunny family: My Bunny, Angel Bunny and Bunny's Friend. Must have been the smell thing, there was no way to duplicate the smell thing. So they sat together in her crib. But when things got ugly or she needed to sleep, her fingers would wrap around that rapidly deteriorating ear, the thumb would slide in, and all would be right with the world. When she moved from the crib to her big girl bed, the bunnies came along.

One morning when she was 3, I sat at the kitchen table, weeping into my journal, while I thought everyone was still asleep. I was pregnant with Jack, and freaking out about what in the hell I thought I was doing having a third child. How was I going to handle three? I was fat, tired, overwhelmed and extremely hormonal. Writing frantically, crying, getting sucked into the craziness that was my pregnant brain, I heard a jingle coming down the hall. I quickly tried to wipe away tears and snot when K appeared in the doorway. She was quite a sight, all sleepy eyed with crazy red curls springing out in all directions and all three bunnies were cradled in her arms.

All I could think to say was "That's a lot of bunnies you've got there K. Do you think that's too many bunnies?"

She blinked her sleepy eyes and then said with utter conviction,"No Mommy there aren't too many bunnies...because they're MY bunnies."

Instantly the hormonal fog lifted, and I knew everything was going to be okay.

I'll do my best to fix you up Bunny.