Boadicea, Bob and Rice

The naming of your toddlers soft toys can be a fun exercise. You may like to resurrect much loved bears and dollies from your own childhood. Try to compete with the Igglepiggles and Ninky Nonks, or be inspired simply by the toys appearance.  I remember being on a flight to the US, when the 4 or 5 year old American boy in the seat in front dropped his teddy bear through the gap. Having retrieved it, I handed it back to him saying “he’s nice, what’s his name?” to which he replied, in a tone and with a look that said, are you simple?! “Blue bear.”  Of course.

POD has dollies of various size and rigidity. These include the classic Tiny Tears type and Raggedy Anne type soft and floppy ones. With no discernible features to draw on and with limited dolly experiences of my own, I was more interested in garages and cars, we decided POD should name them.

The first to undergo our naming process was the largest of the ‘floppies’.  “What’s she called?” we asked POD after she’d been dragging her around for a couple of days, aged about 14 months. “Boadicea!” she replied with gusto.  Now I’m sure you know of Boadicea, warrior Queen of the Britons. And even if you don’t know much about her you’ll have heard the name. However, unsurprisingly she’s not a regular topic of conversation in the Dove household and although the POD Father enjoys a good historical documentary now and then it’s unlikely they’ve been on before bedtime. Equally, as good as POD’s nursery is I doubt the current curriculum covers British History AD 60-61. I should point out that Boadicea is 10 inches tall with light brown hair in bunches and ribbons, a flowery dress, pink cardigan, white socks and pink shoes. She used to have frilly white pants, but these were whipped off some time ago and have now disappeared. She’s not exactly the epitome of a fearsome Celtic Warrior woman. With this unusual and somewhat baffling choice we were intrigued to find out who else would be joining us.

We bought POD one of the Tiny Tears type dolls quite early on, after she showed interest during trips to The Early Learning Centre. Resplendent in a light blue baby grow and attached cap, he has ‘Cupcake’ embroidered on his chest. Not what we were ever going to be calling him. For the first few weeks this baby dolly was simply ‘baby’ but having named Boadicea we felt it only fair to christen him too. What would POD come up with this time….Shakespeare, Nelson, Wellington?

…..“Bob”, or Baby Bob. It trips off the tongue, but was quite frankly a disappointing follow up. So would her next offering be back on form?

Now up for nomenclature, the slightly fey and whimsical looking floppy ballerina dolly. More light brown hair and bunches, a pink dress (there’s a theme here, girl=pink) a sort of crispy tutu under skirt, pink pants (they too have been removed in the past, but this pair has managed to find their way home) and pink ballet shoes with silky white bows.  ‘Ballerina dolly’ had been a feature at bedtime for a while before this whole process began so she was definitely next on the list. Clearly there’s no logic or pattern to POD’s choice of names so we expected the unexpected. However, by this stage she was a firm Peppa Pig fan and was on first name terms with Susie Sheep, Rebecca Rabbit and Candy Cat. We wouldn’t have been surprised therefore if one of these had snuck into the equation.

That was probably the last time we’ll try and second guess our daughter’s imagination. ‘Ballerina dolly’ was duly dubbed ‘Rice’. Post rationalisation draws the inevitable blanks. The only connection we can come up with is that Hipp Organic’s wholesome vegetable & chicken risotto is one of her favourites so we regularly encourage her to “eat up all your rice.”

Having said that we’re yet to see her nibbling on her dolly.