Thank you kind soul!

Another crappy day in Minnesota so for Mommy day today we went to the mall to get the boys pictures taken. When Avery was six months old we had his picture taken with the adorable stuffed animal dog that our dear friend Audry Dellalo sent him when he was born. I thought it would be sweet to get a picture of Jake with the doggie so we packed it up and took it along with us to the mall along with Avery's favorite dump truck. After our short photo session we headed to an indoor play area while the studio processed the pictures. Avery ran around with some other kids while Jake sat in his stroller snuggling with the doggie. We went back to the studio to look at our pictures and then headed home. It was nearly one o'clock by this point and I felt sure both the boys would fall asleep in the car on the way home. We got about halfway home and Avery said to me, "Mommy, we left my doggie at the mall." My heart sank and I vaguely remembered doggie hanging precariously out of the stroller as I was trying to wrangle Avery from the play area. So I turned the car around and headed back towards the mall. The whole way there Avery talked about doggie, wondering where he could be, what he could be doing, hypothesizing about how he got lost. By the time we got back to the mall Jake had fallen asleep so we popped him in the stroller and began to retrace our steps. Avery ran frantically through the mal looking in every direction for doggie. By the time we turned the corner for the play area I could see doggie propped up on a ledge just waiting for us to come pick him up. Some kind soul found doggie and set him aside in just the right spot to find him. Avery ran to doggie and hugged him around the neck as hard as he could. He never let him go the whole way home.

Thank you to whomever found doggie and set him aside for us. There were 100 kids in that play area today and any one of them could have taken doggie home with them. I don't know how I could have explained to Avery what happened to doggie. After watching Toy Story Avery is convinced all of his toys have personalities, greeting them each morning,talking to them all day long. Catasrophe adverted for today but I think Jake will have to get his own doggie.

By the way, Avery declined to be photographed for this post, I think he was too traumatized.