The panda bear, the chimpanzee, and the bottle nosed dolphin


Well A’Dell’s new cousin Audrey is here. She got to meet her after coming home this Saturday, and she was “nervous” as ever, bouncing around in the backseat as we drove over to my sister’s house. She was a little scared to hold baby cousin at first, but with some coaxing and help from her Uncle she went ahead and held her, and then she wouldn’t let her go! It was very sweet watching her meet her first little cousin, and very, very, very sweet seeing how much she likes holding babies since she has a little brother coming soon!
It will be her birthday soon too, and when I asked her if she’d like a waterslide for her birthday, I got a surprising response….
“What I really, really, really want is a stuffed Panda Bear,” she said. “I have always wanted one. I asked Santa for one, but I didn’t get it.”
Ooops! That was the one strange thing on her Christmas wish list that I thought she’d never give a second thought to. But apparently I was wrong. She really had her heart set on a panda bear, and she’s got the memory of a Bottlenose Dolphin. (Bottlenose Dolphins are said to have the best memory skills in the animal kingdom—even better than elephants, but if you watched educational cartoons like us—you’d probably knew that already, haha). While I was verifying that fact with Google, I discovered that dogs forget an event in about 2 minutes, and a Chimpanzee—only 20 seconds! That must be my spirit animal!
In any case, I’m no Bottlenose Dolphin, so I got online and ordered her a stuffed panda bear for Valentine’s Day right away. I can’t wait to see her face after she gets it.
I even got real creative and decided to stitch “I love you A’Dell” on a little stuffed heart that’s attached to the panda bear. That project was a little harder than I thought it’d be. My quick 5 minute project turned into a quick little hour-long project pretty quickly….starting with the challenge of getting thread through a pesky little needle. My work is a little shabby but they say it’s the thought that counts.
Maybe one day many years from now she’ll look at that panda bear and say “My mom isn’t the best seamstress, but she sure does love me!!!”