Backup "Dawk"

Atticus has a favourite toy, his "dawk" (which is Atti-speak for "dog"). Dan took this picture this morning of the boy, prepared for action on his bike, with his dog and a frisbee.

The dog is great. At bed time if we are having trouble settling Atti, we just present him with the dog. He laughs (that relieved and overjoyed laugh when he gets what he wants) and he happily lies down quietly. He didn't used to need his dog. It all started in August when he first got sick (ear infection -> febrile convulsion -> night in hospital -> caught a nasty gastro rotavirus -> sick with vomiting and diarrhoea for a week)... My mother gave it to him one day when she was minding him and he liked it. Ever since then it has been his absolute favourite!

The only problem, and we experienced this last week when Atti picked up another tummy bug on Wednesday (hence my lack of posts last week - blargh) is that if dog gets dirty (such as being vomited on - eeyuck!) and Atti is sick, it makes for difficult sleeping time.

So, we need to get a "backup" dog. We've known about this for a long time - Dante's favourite toy is a cute bear "Brown Bear" which was given to him by some friends who'd bought it in America. We searched far and wide in Australia for another one, but failed. Our friends finally managed to source another one from the same shop in America but by that time Brown Bear was so ratty and old that Dante could tell the difference immediately. Brown Bear now has a "brother" called "Barry Bear". I'll post some pictures some time soon.

One problem with "Dawk" is that he was given to us by my Auntie from Cairns. It will be quite a while since we next get up that way so we did a search on the web. Thankfully he has a tag with the company name "Teddy and Friends, Sydney Australia" and we were able to find the manufacturers! Thank goodness for good websites and terrific customer service. They only sell to wholesalers, but we sent them an email and they sent me a list of local suppliers this morning. How cool! I'm so happy... if I can get a dog, though. He's a 34cm "Smooch" in beige, I believe. You should have a look at some of the animals they have, though - they are so cute! Especially the jungle animals!