My Baby Is Obsessed With a Musical Plastic Face

Little kids are delightfully weird, and so are their fixations

Child development experts estimate that about a third of babies and toddlers develop a strong attachment to a particular toy or object. This can start as early as 8 months and peak around age 3. Whatever terrible entity is in charge of doling out names to baby-related phenomena has decided that these early childhood fixation comfort objects are called “loveys.”

I had a “lovey” as a kid, although we didn’t call it that. My comfort object was a blanket that one of my mother’s coworkers at the Inter-County Leader newspaper had made for me. It started out a butter yellow color and faded to white with age, but I still called it “The Yellow Blanket.” I slept with it every night, until my sister came along when I was 5 and decided that it was her blanket. Reluctantly, benevolently (after many tearful protests) I passed it down to her. She ended up losing it on a family trip to Duluth a few years later. She still gets upset when I bring it up. Hell, I still remember how upset I was when it happened.

By then, I’d moved on from the yellow blanket to a small army of stuffed animals I developed inordinate attachments to. Chief among them were Blizzard and Buttercup, two plush cats (white and orange, natch) that I slept with every night until I was probably too old to sleep with stuffed animals. The rest of the stuffed animals were put to bed so none of them would be “lonely.” My favorites are still at my parents’ house somewhere, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to throw them away. Frankly, I try not to think of them stuffed together in a Rubbermaid box in the basement, possibly lonely without the love of a child. What if they hate the stuffed animal they’re packed away with? What if they’re claustrophobic? (This is why I still don’t do well with the Toy Story movies. They fuck me up.)

I assumed, based on my childhood tendency to project human emotion onto animal-shaped inanimate objects, that my kid would probably get attached to something soft like I did. She’d love it so much that eventually it would be grubby tatters, but I’d never be able to throw it away. I’d hold onto it long after she outgrew it; as an empty nester I would be obligated to store it in an airtight plastic container, clean and dry but forgotten, until she found it while cleaning out my house after I die or go to an assisted living facility. Or something like that.

But it seems like she’s sidestepped my expectations here.

Juniper does seem to be developing an attachment to one object in particular. But it’s not one of the gaggle of stuffies friends relatives gave her before she was born, the kind of stuffed animals that come with their own names, life stories, and, sometimes, charitable causes their purchase supported. Something like “Hi! I’m Eugene the Elephant! I grew up on the Serengeti Plain. I love snuggles and painting! Every purchase of Eugene the Elephant goes to support a special school in Kenya that trains lions to recognize and attack limp-dick Republican dentists from Ohio who travel to Africa to kill big game animals. I love you!”

Nor is she particularly drawn to her baby doll with the smooth face and bean bag body or the JellyCat soothers or Samson, her little stuffed cat. She plays with each of these things, but there’s one toy among her collection that has become the frontrunner for fixation object.

This toy came with neither a name nor a bio. It is a plastic yellow circle with a smiling face painted on it. It is surrounded by fabric in the shape of star points, but I do not think of the object as a star. The toy has a little velcro loop on the back of it, convenient for attaching it to the bars of a crib or stroller. Privately, I refer to it as “Face Boy,” because it is 95% face. Officially, it is called the Star Bright Symphony.

Face Boy lights up and plays music. But because Face Boy is manufactured by a brand known as “Baby Einstein,” the music isn’t your run-of-the-mill Galileo-level baby music like Baa Baa Black Sheep or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or the ABC’s (just kidding; those are all the same melody). Face Boy is for Baby Einsteins, and thus plays clips of classical pieces that are faithful to the vision of their composers in the sense that the pieces as originally written definitely contained notes, and Face Boy plays those notes in the same order as is written in the sheet music. Everything else is bonkers. There are no dynamics; it is all forte. Every tempo is allegrissimo. Ever wanted to hear an aggressive 30-second rendition of Telemann’s Water Music: Harlequinade? Baby Einstein has you covered.

Juniper loves Face Boy. When she’s alone in her playpen, she keeps it within arm’s reach, so that when the music and lights stop, she can reach over and smack the toy, initiating a hysterical interpretation of Mozart along with a light show as she returns to whatever secret baby game she's playing. Sometimes she holds Face Boy by the fabric star shape that surrounds his hard face and looks into its empty plastic eyes as though greeting a dear friend she hasn’t seen in years. Sometimes she kicks Face Boy, sometimes she hugs Face Boy. When Face Boy is not in her playpen, she looks for it.

A lot of parenting, so far, has been coming to terms with the fact that much of who my child will become was baked into her DNA long before anybody was picking out nursery themes. There’s only so much influence we can exert as parents, and only so much we can predict based on our recollections of our own childhoods. Some kids are going to be picky eaters, some will have imaginary friends, and some will bond deeply with a plastic face that flashes red lights.

I should probably spring for the $19.99 to buy a backup, just in case she breaks it.

Image via Shutterstock