The end of an era! Well...kind of..

When Alexis was about 20 months old we went to downtown Denver to eat dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with my parents and my brother. We were celebrating my dad losing a ton of weight, and what better way than eating some cheesecake! Ha! Cory and I got there early and wanted to walk around and do some shopping before dinner. We didn't realize how freezing cold it was going to be that day. We get out of the car and realize not only that it's coooold but that we didn't bring a coat for Alexis. (Aren't we great parents?) We decided that we'd jump into the first store we came across and buy her a blanket to wrap her up in. That store just happened to be Ross. It was busy, really busy. I saw a bin that was full of $5.00 blankets, jack-pot! I grabbed one, paid for it, wrapped my girl up to keep her warm, and we went on our way. I never paid any attention to what was actually on the blanket. For whatever reason, Alexis had this huge attachment to this blanket. At dinner she wanted to hold it the whole time. That night, she wanted to sleep with it. It was a few days later when Spongebob Square Pants happened to come on the TV and she kept pointing to the TV and then to her blanket that I put the 2 together. I let her watch it, realized it was way too adult for a 20 month old and turned it off. But it was too late... she was obsessed! She named the blanket "kiki" and it went with us everywhere. And I mean everywhere! My biggest struggle used to be trying to figure out ways to secretly get it out of her hands and into the washer. Over the past 6 months I've noticed that she doesn't want to bring it with her when we go places. She doesn't need it with her when she plays. In fact, it just laid in her bed all day long and at night she never once asked for it. I decided that I would give it one last washing and pack it up for good. But I realized that I never took a picture of her with the blanket! I thought I needed just one picture, so she'll always remember the story about her "kiki". I had just finishing washing it (and her sheets, that's why her bed is bare!) and snapped a picture of her with it. Because I brought so much attention to it for this picture, she now says that she needs it! Ugh.... luckily it's only at night time. But we are slowly and surely getting away from the kiki. She's growing up.