Well, we are closing in on the first day of junior kindgergarten and we've hit a progress point that is a VERY big deal.
I think on the first day of school, Dylan will leave his two favorite companions in the car.
That would NOT be Mom and Dad, but his beloved hooded towels "Froggie" (who used to have a Frog attached to it) and "Blankie."
He has carried them everywhere a la Linus for the last four years, but we've progressed! Now we say "goodbye" after showering them with hugs and kisses before leaving the car. He will only leave them if I can PROMISE they will be in his booster seat upon his return.
In Dylan's short life, Froggie and Blankie have gone everywhere, logged thousands of airline miles and even shown up in our Christmas family pic. They are the ONLY ones I have since I got them as a shower gift with no idea of the importance they would eventually hold, or else I would have bought 20 of them. They do get washed, but look old, filthy and are full of holes. (Dylan can put his head through Froggie!) At a hotel, I have to hide them in fear a maid will throw them away or think they are rags.
We've had plenty of close calls -- once he left them at a friend's house who showed up on my doorstep at 10 p.m. knowing how vital they were. Another time, I was taking Dylan to my folks in MO for five days. While packing that night, I could not find them. I knew I had taken Dylan running in the jogging stroller that day, so I wandered 3 miles with a flashlight looking for them. No luck. Thankfully around midnight, I realized he "helped" me and buried them in the suitcase.
But the worst experience was a normal day. We grabbed lunch, hit Target and then a hunting store. The hunting store is atypical, but I was running a 15K the next day and the temps were expected in the 20s, and I wanted some hand warming packets. We were almost home and I realized with nothing short of terror we did not have Froggie and Blankie. Visions of them sitting in the parking lot of Target danced in my head. I raced at a too-fast speed to Target, and appeared rather deranged crawling on my hands and knees looking for these blankets under rows of parked cars. Dylan had realized Froggie and Blankie were MIA but held out great hope in my ability to locate them.
So he started stopping random shoppers asking if they had seen his "friends" while I held back tears. A teenage cart retriever asks if I need a cart, and I try to explain that I'm looking for my son's blankets that I ... I choke on the word "lost" and tears well up in my eyes.
“Uh… OK, ma’am,” said the teenager, who was probably wondering if I was drugs.
We checked lost and found at all of our stops and had no luck. We end up at the hunting store, a maze with no aisles and stuff stashed everywhere. I am wondering how to explain to Dylan that his precious friends are forever gone. We retraced our steps through this maze and FINALLY wadded up in the corner under a counter in a dirty aisle were Froggie and Blankie. I almost wept for pure joy. I directed Dylan to them and he ran up, hugged them and said, “You guys were just playing hide and seek! Silly Froggie! Silly Blankie!”
Glad he could see the humor while I was almost in cardiac arrest. I better make sure I know where they are right now...