Buddy and His Binky

I grew up calling my special blanket my "binky." I moved to Illinois and suddenly all my friends from Utah referred to a pacifier as a "binky" and a special blanket as a "blankie" or "minky" or "silky" or anything else but a "binky." I've tried to change my ways, truly I have, but now that Robert has a special blanket of his own, I'm gonna have to choose once and for all what I'm gonna to call it.  The word "blankie" gets stuck on my tongue and tumbles out in a plop. His blanket of choice isn't exactly minky or silky, it's holey. And you can't call a blanket "holey"unless the kid names it that himself. No, I've decided that I must call it a "binky" and be prepared for periodic confusion in the mom circles.

Binky it is.

I don't think I've shown you his binky in action. It's quite useful, you know.

Good for snuggling in general, sometimes doubling as a pillow on mom's shoulder:

 

Extremely useful for testing boundaries. Tonight, for example: Robert grabs the blinds by the sliding glass door. We tell him "no touching the blinds." He obeys and pulls his hand away. Then he uses his binky to play with the blinds. Hmmmmmmm.

 

My personal favorite is the hiding game. He drapes the blanket over his face, sometimes over his entire head, and run-walks towards the last adult he saw, throwing himself into his/her lap (if he manages to circumnavigate the toy minefield).

He knows his binky by name, too. Here he is retrieving it from across the room and thumping into my lap for a snuggle: