Security bunny

Like Peanuts' Linus, Anya has become inseperable over the past few weeks from a security object.

This is supposedly part of the whole separation anxiety thing. As such, it's quite a good problem to have as it's seemingly the only aspect of separation anxiety she's taken on. Some kids scream when they're away from their parents, hide and cry when they meet new people, and end up having to be carried constantly. Whereas Anya is pretty content as long as she's got a hand on her favourite bunny.

The original has a pink handkerchief body and a fairly realistic head, and was given to us by the mother of an old friend of Kate's. We started giving it to her at night a few months ago as we weaned her from the swaddle, and now she won't sleep without it. Sometimes, putting her to bed, she will cry for longer than usual and on checking her we discover that she's managed to fling bunny out of the cot - in which circumstances sleep is clearly out of the question.

Over the past few weeks, this attachment has migrated to awake time as well. When we pick her out of the cot after a sleep, bunny will be clamped firmly in one hand. Sit her in her high chair for breakfast, and you'd better make sure that bunny is scrunched on the table opposite to provide her with a witty and intelligent dining companion. This morning I was crawling around on the sofa with her, trying to stop her falling off, when she climbed down quite determinedly, grabbed bunny off the floor where she'd been last dropped, and climbed back on the sofa to return to whatever it was she was doing.

While we were over in the UK, Kate very presciently decided to order some identical back-up bunnies online. When I found that she'd bought two, my initial reaction was to think it was overkill--how long does it take to clean a machine-washable bunny? But in practice, a 10-month old with a fanatical devotion to a toy rabbit can get it remarkably mucky remarkably quickly, while still wanting to chew on its mashed-broccolli-stained nose. Two back-up bunnies now seems only just enough.

My only concern about this is that some day, toddling through the house with bunny in one hand, she might come upon the other two bunnies drying on the rack. That doesn't bear thinking about: like some Twilight Zone episode for babies.