When Sam was a baby, he had a teddy bear. His name was Daddy Bear. It was very soft and squishy, and everywhere that Sammy went, Sammy went, Sammy went....everywhere that Sammy went, the bear was sure to go. (He even made his way into our photos!!)
It followed him to the park one day, which was against the rules. You can imagine our dismay when we returned home and Daddy bear had not made it back with us. Sam cried and cried for Daddy Bear, and no suitable replacement could be found. No matter how similar, how soft or how squishy the new bears were, they were just not the same.
Then one day, our wonderful neighbor Michelle came home from the Cincinnati Zoo and had found a miniature version of Daddy Bear!! Sam ran to her and hugged the new bear, and immediately named him Baby Daddy Bear. Once again, he went out into the world with his new companion always by his side.
Given that Baby Daddy Bear was a tiny little thing, he proved even harder to keep track of, and he, too, was lost. Sam asked if he went to live at the park with Daddy Bear, and we would tell him stories about Daddy and Baby Bear hiding in the trees until all the children went home from the park, and then coming out at night and having so much fun playing on the swings and going down the slides, loving the fact that they had the park all to themselves! Hannah tried to give him her bear, Skeeter, but he was pink - not good for a boy like Sam.
So he gave Skeeter back, and his mood didn't improve for a very, very long time.
So Sam learned to live without his beloved bear. Since no other stuffed animal would do, he moved on to big boy toys. Spiderman became his new favorite thing. He got so into Spiderman that he told his new teacher at church that his name was Peter Parker!!
After a while, the Watson family moved from Cincinnati to Iowa. Sam was now 3 1/2 and had long forgotten Daddy and Baby Bear, much to his mother's dismay.
Sam is now the ripe old age of 5 - super heroes and Legos are his favorite toys. He plays computer games, loves SpongeBob and can name the artist behind every song on his iTunes playlist! He plays "Eye of the Tiger" and "Livin' On a Prayer" on Guitar Hero and can whip his mom's behind at wii Tennis. Baby toys are a thing of the past. Until.............
One day as Toys-r-Us, shopping for a bday gift, we found something incredible. Something EXTRA soft, EXTRA squishy and EXTRA large! It was as if the heavens opened and a light rested upon the shelf in the middle of the store to reveal........
GRANDPA DADDY BEAR!!!
Before our eyes was an exact copy of the treasured original Daddy Bear - supersized! The happiness of a boy and his bear being reunited was a thing of beauty. Sam was so, so happy!
Grandpa Daddy Bear is so big and fluffy and to be quite honest, Sam's mother was just as happy to see him as Sam was. Because when Sam holds that bear, he doesn't have to be big. It's ok for him to still be a little boy who loves a bear.
Now, even though he is not a baby anymore (as he quite often reminds us) he remembers his love for his very first Daddy Bear. And as long as it will last, his mother will hold onto the memory of her little boy, clutching his Daddy Bear, and his Baby Daddy Bear, and his Grandpa Daddy Bear - because he will always be that little boy, no matter how grown up he becomes.
