G was rooting through the dregs of her Halloween stash and found a little rubber frog. It was suddenly the coolest toy ever.

“Its my frog. Its my froggy. Its name is pink froggy.”

Pink froggy had to come to daycare. This was vitally important. VITALLY IMPORTANT!

Normally when G wants to take something in with her, i can pull the old switcheroo sometime between loading her in the car and dropping her off. My back seat has enough inventory to open a Toys’R’Us.   If the thing G brings into school is big enough, i’m pretty confident we can find it later. Stuffed Kila survived 2 days at Kinder Kare this way. But this frog was tiny, and if lost it would never be found. Last week at the gym she insisted on bringing her superball in with her. She assured me she would keep track of it, but who’s kidding who?   She needs her whole fist to hold it and it can disappear in the blink of an eye. It was only with the (exceedingly, excruciatingly) patient help of the staff that we retrieved it from a toy bin and avoided a deluge of tears. Then it promptly vanished in the car. I understand all this – what’s not to like about a superball when you live in a house almost entirely tiled, and goto a gym covered in wood flooring?

So, face tears for telling G she had to leave the pink frog in the car, or face tears later telling her its lost?   I opted for the latter; there was a chance someone else would get to break the news to her.   That’s quality parenting.   So I told her to put it in her tinyPocket, and for about 10 minutes she was very conscious that pink froggy was stowed there.   It then became more my mystery to know if pink froggy would survive the day.   At least for this immediate time being, G said “Pink Froggy who??”

It vanished.   But G was oddly calm about it, telling me nonchalantly it was in her cubby when i saw her at home after work.   It was not in the cubby in the morning, I asked G and Miss Anna to keep an eye out for it, and like The Impossible Journey, froggy was back in the cubby that afternoon.   G lost it immediately in the car, then tore its little pink froggy limbs off playing at home, then cried when we couldn’t bring it to the park.

At least I got to watch my little game play itself out.