Verrrrrry Lucky!!!!!

We had swimming today for Sasha, which means that Nikita has to go into the creche at the pool. She doesn't like it & I allow her to take her beloved Teddy to keep her company & keep her happy. It worked really well today. I left her & Teddy to their morning tea & took Sasha for her lesson.

Sasha now swims (in the shallows) with a teacher, without me. She did REALLY well today. Paid very good attention, and thoroughly enjoyed herself. She got to play for another 15mins after the lesson & then we went & got her showered & changed.

In to creche we went, to pick up Nikita who was happily unloading the sandpit onto the softfall rubber outside. We got all her gear together to go home & then the search began. Where's Teddy? We can't go home without him as she adores his like nothing else on this green Earth of ours!! We look, and we look, and we look. We look in the baby's room, we look through the toy boxes, we look in the oven, we look behind all the bags in the pigeon holes. The creche ladies look too. We look for over 1/2 hour, but he's JUST NOT THERE!!! He must have gone home with someone else by accident. I hope that they are kind & ring me to tell me to come & collect him.

OMG I can't believe he's gone!! She's just too young to have lost her precious Teddy!! I know it will happen eventually, but not yet!! Please not yet!!

I tell all the staff that he has a tag with my phone number on it, if he turns up, can they please call me. We leave and walk out to the car. All the while I'm thinking, I'm sure he'll turn up, I just know that he will. He can't really be lost or gone forever. In a day or two someone will have returned him. I start planning to call the creche tomorrow to see if he's been handed in. Maybe I should scout around the carpark in case he's been discovered & dumped.

"Where's my Teddy?" says Nikita as soon as she's buckled in. "WHERE'S MY DRINK!!!!!" shouts Sasha. I seach through my bags & Sasha's drink bottle isn't there. Damn, my patience is running out!! I remember seeing a drink bottle like Sasha's sitting on top of the pigeon holes at creche. So we drive down to the 5min parking to go back in to the Creche to see if it's Sasha's bottle.

We pass some boys throwing balls over the 6ft high wall outside creche & get told off by the creche ladies for leaving a door open. (Despite the fact that a toddler of someone else's is hanging off the door, holding it open & the mum is standing in the way gas-bagging!!)

Ah, there's the bottle. Yep, it's Sasha's alright - got her name on it. She must have left it there when we dropped Nikki off before swimming.

On the way out, mulling over those boys. Hmmm, if balls are coming over the wall from creche, maybe someone threw Teddy over the wall too. I wander around the garden bed & find a small brown furry body lying in the bushes with a Label Tag on his bottom with the name Teddy: Ph **** *** ***.

Miss Nikita is now sleeping in bed with her bestest friend securely tucked under her arm & her thumb in her mouth, oblivious to the near-tragedy she avoided today.