The Tale of the Lost Lovey

Our family is preparing for a monumental task: moving with a toddler.

Granted, this move will be small. We live in an apartment (two bedroom) and we're moving into the unit across the hall (three bedroom). When we moved into the apartment we now call home three years ago (moving from a one bedroom), it was just the two of us, and we grappled with the idea of what to do with our new space!

Now that we're a family of three, two bedrooms feels cramped. So later this month, we will make the move.

As I mentioned in my post about bath time with a toddler, my little girl is smart enough to help me with basic tasks. So over the weekend, I asked her to help me pick up a mountain of stuffed animals and put them in a bin (which is ultimately going to be donated to charity - we kept the important ones). And so she did!

Later that night, as we're preparing for bed, SuperScott says to me, "Where's lovey?" I looked in the crib, I looked in the living room, I looked in our bedroom, I looked everywhere for her lovey and it was nowhere to be found. When she realized that she was going to have to go to bed with a substitute lovey, she cried the biggest tears I have ever seen in my life. (And fortunately was still able to fall asleep!)

After we put her down, SuperScott and I turned our apartment upside down trying to find this thing, when it occurred to me to dig through the donation box.

And there it was. Halfway through pulling everything out of the box, there it was. While helping, she had put her own lovey in the box. It is a stuffed animal after all, right? I'm sure it made perfect sense to her.

We both breathed a sigh of relief.

Word to the wise: when your child is attached to an object, buy two! Or three! Or more! Fortunately for us, had this one gone missing for good, we have an identical one that she leaves at daycare. The company that makes her lovey bear stopped making it when she was a few months old, so I grabbed an extra from the clearance rack and I am so thankful we did.