a tragic day in the life of Addie

Addie has had Puppy for about a year and a half. He has become one of her best friends. For a long time he went everywhere we went and was a necessity for sleeping and Mother's Day Out. In the past 2 months she and Puppy have slowly drifted apart. They still hung out occasionally but their bond had started to fade. This morning Addie brought Puppy in the car with us to church. We were running late (as usual) and when Keri dropped A, D, & me off at the front door Addie brought Puppy. I didn't really notice that she had him and I dropped her off in her class and scurried upstairs to meet Keri in our ABF (adult bible fellowship). After ABF and church were over Keri went to pick up Addie. We chatted with Chad and Christi and there was no mention of Puppy. About 1:30 we got a call from Lauren. She and her husband Zach had volunteered in Addie's class that morning and before they left the room they saw Puppy. Lauren knew that he was Addie's so she grabbed him and took him home with her. She called and asked if we needed to come get him today or could we just get him tomorrow when we were both at church for MOPS. Keri and I agreed that it was no big deal to wait until tomorrow since she hadn't slept with him for about month and hadn't even noticed that he was gone. Fast forward to about 8pm. Addie is in bed with the lights off and asks for Puppy. Keri and I looked at each other and we got a little nervous. We said, "oh, we'll go look for Puppy and come right back". We were hoping she'd fall asleep quickly and forget about Puppy but that didn't happen. After about 10 minutes of her calling for him I finally went in and told her what had happened. Oh. my. goodness. It was tragic! She cried hard for a good 10 minutes while I laid down with her and pulled out all the stops to get her to calm down. I finally figured out that patting her back and laying down with her weren't going to work. So I pulled out this huge bag of stuffed animals that we have and asked her if she wanted to pick one to sleep with. She said no, and cried for Puppy again. I tried to talk her into a few of the available options but she wasn't interested. Finally I gave her my best offer....I asked her if she wanted to sleep in a princess dress tonight. Oh boy that did the trick. So after one more story princess Addie finally drifted off to sleep.

Here's a word of wisdom for you all-when your kid has a lovey BUY MORE THAN ONE!

the rejects

finally asleep