Bye Bye BoBo

Perhaps you can guess what happened here:

I myself am still so traumatized by the death of BoBo that I can barely speak of it without dissolving into tears. It has taken me until now to be able to post about it and I'm taking frequent breaks to blow my nose.

As you know, I allowed the BoBo situation to linger on waaaay too long -- by approximately two full years. By the time Mace reached three years old he had developed an obsessive attachment to the BoBo such that we kept having to hide the BoBo on higher and higher shelves during the day so that he couldn't get to it. The rule was that he could only have the BoBo when he was sleeping. The reality was that he had the BoBo whenever he could climb up and get it.

I am ashamed that I let the situation go this far and, of course, blame Grandma. He's too cute and Grandma has a hard time saying no to him. You can't fault her, really. He is cute.

But the reign of BoBo has come to an end. By the time we returned from our trip to Georgia over Memorial Day, the BoBo pictured above (only still with its nipple attached -- I'm sorry -- all of your internet filters at work will not allow you to see this post now that I've used the "n" word, but there was really no way around it) was the only BoBo left. (I'm not sure where all the BoBos went -- over the last three years Mace has lost at least 15 BoBos. Ten years from now I'll be looking for a pair of shoes to wear and will probably find all 15 of them hidden in a pair of boots.)

I had promised myself (and everyone else) that when the last remaining BoBo pictured above died, that would be it for the BoBos. I don't think I really meant it, but because I had said it out loud, other people were trying to hold me to it, namely Dez and my own traitor husband. Let me set the stage: it's bedtime the night after we get back from Georgia; I have found the BoBo in the suitcase but have realized that it is torn badly enough at the base that Mace would easily suck it off in his sleep and then choke on it in the night. I panicked and told Joe to go buy another BoBo at Walgreens. Joe said, "Maybe this should just be the end of it, don't you think?" He knows better than to hold my own words against me -- we've been married for almost 14 years. But Dez happened to be leaving us to go back to her apartment and she actually backed him up and said, "Just do it. Do it tonight. No more BoBo." Then she left -- because she did not want to hear Mace screaming for the BoBo -- it would have made her cry. Like it did me.

He was so inconsolable over the death of the BoBo that I eventually had to just tear off the nipple at the base of the BoBo and give him what was left of the BoBo to hold while he slept. It was heartbreaking -- you should have seen the look on his face when I ripped his BoBo apart. I don't think he'll ever forgive me.

After he went to sleep, I went into the bathroom and cried into a towel.

Mace still carries what's left of the BoBo around. Last night he fell asleep on our bed watching TV sucking on the handle part of it. It seems cruel to still call it "BoBo" though, so we've renamed it.

Now we call it "Nub."