The Traveling Baby Blanket

The Nudder Blankee

When my youngest son Ryan was born, our neighbor (not from the redneck-magnet rental but the house on the other side of us) gave us two blankets that she’d made as a baby gift. They were almost identical except slightly different in color. As Ryan got older he developed a preference for one of them over the other. When he started talking he started calling it his “nudder blankee” because when we would cover him with the one he didn’t like he would say that he wanted the nudder (other) one. He became so attached to that one that the other one was never wanted. One night when he was sleeping, in his pitch-black room, I covered him with the one that he didn’t like. Even though it was impossible to tell the difference in the dark, he woke up and came running out into the hallway and said “This is not my nudder blankee!”.

My wife had a pile of clothes and things in the dining room to take to the Goodwill the other day, and with it being cold in the house I grabbed a blanket off the top of the pile to cover up with. When Ryan, now eleven, came in the room he said “Hey that’s my nudder blankee!”. It was indeed, and had been scheduled for dispersal to some needy person until Ryan found that out and rescued it by saying that we couldn’t give his nudder blankee away. So, after being buried in a stack of baby things for a few years it has returned and is being used by him even at this moment. The simple comforts of life.

Our Source