Life with Levi... The Great Lambie Swap of 2012

Lambie says hello

Life with Levi
The Great Lambie Swap of 2012
By Amanda Rodeheffer-Olson

Meet Lambie.

Lambie is Levi’s bestest friend in the whole wide world. If he were allowed, Levi would take Lambie everywhere! Lambie is a must at bedtime, and when Levi is sick.

This poor lamb has been through it all… He’s been puked on, peed on, but thankfully never pooped on. And after a half dozen washes (even though the tag strictly forbids machine washing), Lambie stinks!

Here’s a little background on Levi’s little lamb…

Lambie is a Nelly Cuddles, which means he’s filled with all kinds of good smelling stuff like lavender and chamomile, etc. The lamb came into our possession when Grandma Terri bought it for me as a baby shower gift. (So technically, I’ve had Lambie longer than I’ve had Levi.) Lambie sported a pink bow, a pink flower on it’s head and a tag on it’s butt (this will mean something later, I promise!).

When Levi was born, Aaron (also known as Daddy) and I could not get our little bundle of joy to sleep at night like a normal human being.

Enter Lambie.

When nuked in the microwave for one minute, Lambie gets warm and smells all pretty, lulling little babies to sleep. It worked on Levi, anyway. So thanks to Lambie (and Grandma Terri), Mommy and Daddy finally got to sleep during dark-time hours again!

At first, Lambie was great… We’d nuke him, lay him on Levi’s tummy, and night-night baby. But then something terrible happened.

Daddy didn’t realize that you have to wait for Lambie to cool down completely before you re-nuke him. So one day when Mommy went to nuke Lambie, she noticed that he smelled like burnt popcorn.

Not a good thing.

No more nuking Lambie.

Levi quickly adjusted, and soon, just having Lambie around was enough for him. (The burnt popcorn smell eventually wore off, thankfully!)

But as babies do, Levi grew. And grew, and grew.

Soon, he was able to pick Lambie up on his own… And chew on the tag on Lambie’s butt.

Do you know how humiliating it is to have your son run around chewing on a tag attached to a lamb’s butt? I hope you don’t, but unfortunately, I do.

Let’s just say that Lambie wasn’t allowed out in public during this phase.

Eventually, the tag started to fray, and Mommy cut it off. So, like any good little boy, Levi moved on to chewing on the bow.

And gagging himself with the bow.

Needless to say, the bow went bye-bye too.

So poor Lambie is now tagless, bowless, and is starting to smell a bit like baby formula. Soy baby formula to be exact. But still, Mommy could not wash him because the tag said no-no.

Or at least that was until Levi threw up sweet potatoes on Lambie. So now Lambie is tagless, bowless, smells like formula and sweet potato puke, and is orange all down one side.

Mommy decided that it was time to at least try and wash the lamb.

The initial washing was a success. After throwing Lambie in a pillowcase (just in case he exploded), Mommy threw the lamb in Grandma Yvonne’s high-efficiency washing machine on the stain cycle and the hand-wash setting.

Lambie survived… He was kinda slimy, kinda smelly, but all in all, he was unscathed. And he took a full week to dry.

During this week, poor Levi was fit to be tied. He missed Lambie so much, and no other stuffed animal of any type could possibly take the lamb’s place.

So when Lambie came back, Mommy and Daddy knew that Lambie would be around for a long time to come.

Fast-forward until November of 2012. Lambie had survived a few more trips to the “lamb-washing farm” as we told Levi, who is now a year and a half. But the bad thing was that Lambie looked awful even after he came out of the wash… And he was starting to smell like a Sharpie.

Not good.

So at Christmastime this year, I asked Grandma Terri if she could get ahold of a new lamb… And she said she could.

So Mommy began hatching a plan… A plan to swap the lambs! (Mwah-ah-ah!)

Just before Christmas, we told Levi that Lambie had to go away for a little while. Another trip to the lamb-washing farm and all that.

But this time, when Lambie came back after Christmas, he looked good as new!

It was a Christmas miracle!

We told Levi that Lambie went to the lamb-dry-cleaners instead of the same old lamb-washing farm, and that he had some extra fluffing done.

The new Lambie smells good, looks good and doesn’t gross me out when Levi insists that I kiss the lamb.

And the best part is that Levi doesn’t even know it’s a different lamb! (Or doesn’t care; don’t know which.) Check out the photos below of the new lamb… Much better, huh?

He treats the new Lambie with the same love and affection as the old one. He still carries it around by the foot or by biting it’s nose, and throws it across the room and giggles because Lambie is flying!

The old Lambie is still around… He’s currently hiding in the top of Mommy and Daddy’s closet under a hat. He’ll end up in Mommy’s keepsake box eventually.

Well, that is if he ever stops smelling like a Sharpie.