Is it him?

Kinda cool story - a couple of days ago, as I was putting away the kids laundry, JD found the yellow memory box in his closet. It's the memory box with all of Calvin's memoirs in it - hospital bracelets, photos, cards, poems, etc. He came running over and said "what's this Mommy" and at first I said, "oh, it's just a yellow box of Mommy's". Then I thought, well, what better time than now to look inside with them. So we did.

Inside the box is a mini beanie baby that was in Calvin's bassinet when he was brought to us after delivery. It's a little grey and white bear type of thing - and just a few inches long. At our hospital, all preemie babies are given a beanie baby which stays with them for their whole hospital stay - both JD and Cole had them too. But Calvin's was a mini one.

When we opened the box, Cole immediately grabbed the little beanie baby and called it "Baby Calvin". For the rest of the morning, Cole would not put this little guy down. He talked to it, carried it and hugged it. My first thought was that it had to go back into the box because I needed to preserve it. But when Cole would not give it up as I pleaded for him to do, I reconsidered and figured, why not let him have it and let it be loved; right? He really liked the little guy and just seemed right to let him run with it.

We left on a roadtrip later that day and he had to bring it with us. He slept with it that night and clenched it all the way home the next day. This morning he had it with him all the way to school. And when he got back in the car after school, it was in his car seat waiting for him. He couldn't wait to get to the car. He tried to bring him into the tub with him too - and we had a hard time explaining that he couldn't get wet.

I dunno - it's probably more of the novelty of a new little stuffed thing for him to carry around. But I would like to think of it as some sort of symbolism of his love for his identical twin brother. I'll never know. But it sure warms my heart to believe that somehow Calvin is smiling down and giving us a reminder that he's always with us. And Cole feels it too.