When I was a new mother, back when I imbibed parenting magazines like an alcoholic does liquor, I read somewhere about the concept of pushing a security object on your child.

The idea resonated with me.

I had a baby blanket my grandmother gave me when I was a week old. It was white with baby animals scampering across the knit side, with ivory satin trim. I snipped some of that satin trim and stuffed it into my pocket for good luck the morning I competed in the three-legged race during third-grade Field Day. I took my blanket with me when I studied abroad in college. I slept with what was by then a shredded remnant the night before my wedding.

The magazine article and my personal experience persuaded me that it made sense to cultivate in my baby a deep-seated attachment to a blanket or stuffed animal. I tried it with my first-born, but he could not have cared less about the green satin square I shoved in his crib. I tried it with my second-born, and she actually grew quite fond of what she dubbed “pink silky,” as well as a stuffed pink cat she named “Faygan.”

But neither pink silky nor Faygan were indispensable. If they were around at bedtime, great. If they couldn’t be tracked down, no tears ensued.

So nothing prepared me for the obsessive nature of my third child, Orli.

When she was born, friends of my parents gave her a very expensive baby blanket. Like pink silky, it was satin on one side and chenille on the other. But comparing mass-market pink silky to this boutique silky is like comparing Waffle House decaf to Illy espresso.

Its delicate hue, the pale pink of ballet slippers, contrasted sharply with pink silky’s Pepto Bismol tint.

Its silky side is smoother than anything I’ve ever felt, the soft side so soft the manufacturer copyrighted a name for it: CozyChic.

For the longest time, Orli seemed ambivalent toward this luxurious rectangle. Then, literally overnight, that changed.

It is not often you can pinpoint the exact day an obsession takes root. Perhaps that’s because an obsession rarely starts out as such. Usually, it unfolds as a vague feeling of fondness before it segues into love and, eventually, at some undetermined hour, reaches the tipping point.

On June 13, the day before our summer vacation to Chicago, I folded silky up and stuck it in the suitcase. Maybe, I reasoned, it might be helpful for Orli to have something to remind her of home during a trip that would have us sleeping in three different places in the span of a week.

That decision neatly cleaved our family life in two: pre-June 14, a.k.a. the pre-silky era, and post-June 14.

This is not bland affection.

This is all-consuming desire.

When Orli needs silky and silky is not in her line of sight, she freaks.

“Sicky, sicky!” she wails. She prostrates her little body on the floor, crying pitiful cries. She arches backwards, bonking her head on the floor, which only intensifies her yearning for that 30 x 36-inch piece of plush.

Her brother and sister scurry around the house trying to find it. Is it in the hamper? Under the bed? In the tub?

Once it’s located, Orli drapes it around her neck, like a prize fighter with his towel. She immediately stops crying and proceeds to go about her baby business.

We have had to establish two ground rules regarding silky, neither of which she understands:

1. No silky allowed in the highchair while eating. Too messy.

2. No silky allowed in the car except on long trips. For daily errands, there is “car silky,” a recently introduced smaller square that she sometimes tolerates, sometimes tosses.

Despite the rules, it goes without saying that a much-loved blanket like silky might get a little dirty. It also goes without saying that the one-and-only silky could not be washed. Even the delicate cycle was too fraught with peril. The dryer was taboo. Hand-washing and hanging to dry? That’s way too long for baby to be sans blankie.

It was clear what I had to do: Procure silky No. 2.

I started out slyly. One night once it was too dark to see, I snuck pink silky, that cheap impostor, into Orli’s crib. She pitched it out.

eBay offered salvation for $58, less than Nordstrom’s but way more than I ever thought I’d plunk down for a baby blanket. But a mom’s got to do what a mom’s got to do. I bid. I won.

When silky’s twin arrived, it was more fraternal than identical – pinker and fluffier in its newness than the much-loved original.

The good news: Orli took to it just the same.

The bad news: Now she expects both.

Bonnie appears Mondays on TriangleMom2Mom.