Whose Lovie is it anyway?

The other night Gabe was out to dinner and I was home, where else, with the kiddos.  Phoebe was down to sleep, and Mary-Mae asked if I would sew up some holes in her green blankie.  So, I pulled out the sewing kit and started to stitch.  Those of you who know me might be confused that I actually OWN a sewing kit, let alone know how to use it.  The fact that I was so willing to help shows how strong MY attachment to the blanket it.  It is a lovely quilt that my parents bought before Mary-Mae was born.  Like all good first time Mom's I had a theme, and that theme was The Beach.  The quilt has rows of sea creatures, starfish, dolphins, whales, fish, etc.  I LOVE this blanket, and as I was sewing it, my mind started drifting to me unwrapping it at my shower, sitting in our nursery big and pregnant, folding and re folding the quilt over and over, getting more and more excited about her birth.  I remembered when she was six months old getting her portrait taken laying on the blanket.  How fun it is to look at those pictures now and compare the two blankets.  As I eagerly stitched trying to make it so it doesn't dissolve into several pieces I wondered what she would do if I didn't repair it.  Would she be just as happy to have a scrap of it, or would it not be the same? I decided I didn't want to know the answer, and that was why I was happy to help with the repairs.  With every stitch I realized keeping it whole in one piece makes her babyhood seem more present.  If it did dissolve and wind up as a piece of the blanket we would look at the pit cures, and say "REMEMBER the green blankie?"  It would be in the past a piece of history, and I am frantic to make it NOT history.  I want that time to still be in the present, and as long as the blanket is whole, it means she wasn't a baby that long ago, right??
  
"Ummm, Mom?  Can I have my blanket back?"