Will the Real "Bear" Please Stand?

One of our twins--Emma--has a bear that she clings to for emotional support and comfort. She also sleeps with this bear. It's never too far from her, but as she's not especially dependent upon it anymore, it is sometimes hard to locate at bed time. It's always in some crazy place she left it when she became preoccupied with a toy or an activity.

The trouble is, when I have to go searching for "Bear"--I often get it confused with all the other Bears she has had. Her sister Halle and her each received one of these types of animals in their first few months and have clung to them--Halle even more so with her blue and pink stuffed puppies.

They cling to their "friends" in different ways. Halle (pictured below) sucks her thumb and holds "Blue Puppy" close to her nose as she does this. Emma used to put Bears arm in her mouth and suck on it all night, creating the pukey bile you see on the front of the Bear pictured 2nd from the left.

We bought a lot of new Bears for her in an attempt to keep these clean and not so gross, but she would accept no substitutes. Finally, to break her of this disgusting habit, we took her Bear from her and made her sleep with a new, clean one. The arm didn't hold her salivic juices, so it was of no interest to her mouth. She soon forgot about the old "Stinky Bear" as we called it, and moved on to the new Bear to snuggle. But now we have all these generations of Bears lying around, and there's only one true Bear that she's interested in.

So needless to say, the hunt at bed time is full of much detective work. By the way, the real Bear is the last on the left, next to one of the original "Stinky Bears."