Build-A-Bear

A few weeks ago, Maya started saying "dada"... ever since Patrick made Maya's Build-A-Bear before he left-we play it right before bed every night-I had been planning on making him one with the recording of her voice in it. My thoughts were always "how am I going to do this and get it there so that the first time he hears her say "dada" it will be in this little stuffed animal??"

Coencidentally, thankfully, she started saying it the day he left for 12 days for Cpl's Course! We had to drive over 2 hours to Fayetteville to the closest Build-A-Bear, make it, and we sent it out right from a post office there... it was quite a day, but the box with the little bunny in it was waiting for him when he got back from the course!

It was an awful drive there, and thankfully my friend Elizabeth was there or I might have lost my sanity. Maya was freaking out-so awful that it took three hours to get there-I think my ears might have been bleeding a little. Even when we went in to the mall she was still going on and on-I did Tylenol, teething tablets... and then if you know me, you KNOW I hate Orajel for her-I actually went there. She was fine after that. Thankfully.

Picking out an animal was cute. The girl knows what she likes. I showed her one teddy bear, and then another... none got excited responses. The third was the bunny. Ohh the bunny... she squealed and kicked and hit and the bunny was chosen.

Since I am the prepared (read: crazy) type, I was of course concerned that I would drive all that way to the store and then since she's new at saying it, not cooperate and our efforts would be in vain. I got a good recording of her saying it on the digital camera a night or two before, and took that with us as backup. She cooperated, but the room we were in to record it at the store was really echo-y so there was a lot of background noise. I ended up using the recording because it was far clearer to put one speaker up to another and just go from there.

Here we are stuffing the bear...

Making sure it was stuffed enough...

Picking out a heart...

Making a wish...

...and then giving the heart kisses.

We had to "wash the bunny"... which she thought was too funny.

(Good thing I am talented in one-handed typing)

We decided to keep the little bunny simple-Maya's bear just has the light pink bows on its ears, and so this one we did the same.
In the end, it was a super fun day... and well worth the trip :)