Recently, the City of Parkville has been trying to streamline its operations and eliminate redundancies. Normally, this is a good thing, but I’ve recently had cause to add a few redundancies to my life, just to preserve my already dubious sanity.
My daughter has formed an attachment to a smelly, raggedy little stuffed teddy bear that she creatively dubbed Grr Bear — you can’t expect too much; she’s two. This bear goes everywhere with her. She sleeps with it, eats with it, carries it around with her and once it even took a bath with her. This led to a bath for it on the gentle cycle in the washing machine, of course, but every washing just gets it looking more matted and ratty.
My husband and I and daughter and Grr Bear went shopping recently. After going to lunch and several shops, all with Grr Bear safely accounted for, we headed home. The problem arose once we got home, when we realized we were one Grr down.
Our daughter had fallen asleep in the car, so the missing toy went unnoticed for several hours, long enough for it to be near closing time for most stores. When our daughter started asking for the toy, we realized we couldn’t find it anywhere and the hunt was on. At first, we hoped to just deflect and distract and we’d go back the next day and look for the bear. Our daughter was having none of this, so we relented quickly.
The meltdown was immediate and catastrophic. While struggling to get her into the car seat, I’m afraid I was frustrated and let the cat out of the bag. “Where’s Grr?” she wailed, going stiff as a board so we couldn’t strap her into the seat. “We lost him!” That was not my finest moment.