The accidental replication of Harlow's work

My final semester of college I took Psych 101 to meet my Social Science requirement.  In all honesty, I only remember a few things from the class due to a wicked case of senioritis.  Even though I was totally phoning it in, I vividly remember this poor little Rhesus monkey and the experiment Harry Harlow conducted on him:

In a nutshell, Harlow designed an experiment where infant monkeys were taken away from their mothers and given blanket moms.  When the researchers took the blanket away the little Rhesus monkeys showed great signs of distress.  My textbook showed a picture of the crying, distraught monkey.  I openly wept for that monkey...right there in class.

Harlow actually did learn a lot about primate attachment from his experiment.  In my opinion it wasn't anything that a mother didn't already know and he could have saved some poor Rhesus monkeys a lot of heart ache by just asking one.  But I'm sure that's just the penis envy talking.  (Look at that, I did learn something from Psych 101.)

Now what did I learn from this experiment?  That blankies are a BIG deal.  DON'T mess with blankie.

Which brings me to the parental drama I faced yesterday.  We lost blankie.  We lost blankie!

My daughter's devotion to her blankie can only be compared to Linus...and of course that poor Rhesus monkey.  She plays with blankie, sleeps with blankie, eats with blankie, talks to blankie.  My husband and I have often shuttered in horror thinking of what we would do if something happened to blankie.  And then yesterday it finally happened.  Blankie was MIA.  There was a meltdown of Biblical proportions.  Weeping, gnashing of teeth, maybe even sackcloth and ashes.  It was bad.

We searched the house.  No luck.  We searched the car.  No luck. We searched the house and the car three or four more times.  No luck.  We went to MOPS that morning so I returned to the church to see if it was left there.  No luck.  I sent out a Facebook APB to see if anyone found it.  No luck.  No luck.  No luck.

By some miracle Emerson agreed to go to bed with a substitute blankie.  She wasn't happy about it but I told her that blankie had gone on an adventure and would be back soon.  She bought it but I don't know how long this story is going to work.  At some point she will expect the adventure to end.

We are on day two of no blankie and I am starting to lose hope.  If a monkey in a textbook broke my heart, you can only imagine what watching my daughter is doing to me.  It is hard to see your child lose the thing they love, the thing that gives them comfort, the thing that gives them security.

This whole incident just so happened to coincide with my toe check-up this morning.  Things are healing nicely (yay!) but healing slower than originally estimated.  It looks like another month of no running and a couple more weeks of no swimming.  AND at least another week in the post op shoe (which is really fun in the snow by the way!).

So hot.  Let's face it, when I wear this men want me and women want to be me.

Another month of no running.  Looks like mommy just lost her security blanket too and now I am trying not to have a meltdown of Biblical proportions.  But I am not 2, and I am not allowed to throw a fit...even though I kinda want to.  I can still do the stationary bike and weights.  That will just have to do for now.  You know what they say, when life hands you lemons you make lemonade... and when life hands you a post op shoe you strut your stuff in that butt ugly thing.

The current hope in the Schmidt house is that Emmy gets blankie back and mom doesn't loose her mind!  Fingers crossed!!