Adventures of Bunny Bear

This morning at 4 m, both children came to sleep in our bed, Micah probably crawled in earlier, but woke up and was moving around and chattering, Thea had a little bloody nose. After 30 minutes to get them settled and back to sleep, I found myself wedged between them, awake and needing to go to the bathroom and with almost no room to move. So I slithered, wiggled, readjusted Thea whose legs were hanging of the bed, and left. On the way back, I decided to try Thea's bed where the large white tiger was taking a lot of space, but probably wouldn't kick me in the kidneys or try to take over what little space was mine.

Not the best start to the day.

But the day goes by with the usual chaos until we arrive at that time of day when Tesh returns with Micah and then he and I drive off to pick up Thea.

Except the first words out of Tesh's and Micah's mouths were, "Micah left Bunny Bear at school."

Oh, sh*t. Well then, that puts yet another kink in the day. My usually sunny, happy guy is visibly upset, mouth is quivvering, tears are welling.

And I had to survive a 20 minute trip to Lawrenceville with a sobbing little boy crying, "I want my Bunny Bear" in just the most piteous little voice.

So, since I went to extremes about two years ago when we thought Thea's tiger could have been at the rest stop on the Eastern Shore, it seemed like something similar needed to be done.

After signing out Thea from YingHua, I got out the cell phone and started by calling Ela, Micah's itinerant teacher (until March of this year).

And sympathizing with our plight, Ela called Miriam (she's the coordinator of the parent-infant program).

Miriam called the school, where by some stroke of good fortune the custodian Craig was still around, and despite my misdirection about Bunny Bear either being in the room where Micah naps or in his his locker, he found Bunny Bear on the floor in the bathroom in Micah's classroom.

And by another stroke of good fortune, Steve was driving home from an afternoon bridge match and was in a place where he could make a detour to go to the school to pick up the bear.

Which necessitated all the phone calls made in reverse order to arrange the hand off.

Micah kept going to the powder room window to check for the arrival of the Bunny Bear.

So Bunny Bear is safe at home tonight, taking a bath in the washing machine to celebrate because he was packaged with a note that said "Wash Me" - he's overdue, but Micah likes him that way. All the good smells get washed out, the drool, the dirt, all the stuff the makes it his most loved stuffed animal.

Thank you, Ela.

Thank you, Miriam.

Thank you, Craig.

Thank you, Summit School for being the sort of place you can call a staff member about a dirty, smell cross-dressing bunny-bear and they understand its importance to a little guy's happiness.