Rabbit.

I had to chuckle through my tears at how silly my crying was – my husband sure was. But I couldn’t help it. We lost rabbit. We might never see him again. He was out there alone in this world, without my son to snuggle with him. And my son no longer had his favorite thing in the entire world. I was crying over a lost stuffed animal. {Yes, I said stuffed.}

You see, my son has been ever-so-attached to rabbit for a long time now. He doesn’t need rabbit. After asking for rabbit and being told that he was lost, Abe still slept just fine last night without him. No, he loves rabbit. He hugs him and sleeps with him and kisses him and laughs and giggles whenever he sees rabbit. He gives him giant squeeze hugs and sometimes, when he doesn’t know I am listening, I hear him tell rabbit that he loves him. Now do you see why I was crying?

We have narrowed it down to rabbit falling off of the stroller when we walked all around downtown St. Paul yesterday. So this morning the kids and I went back to St. Paul and wandered the streets looking for rabbit. I even talked with the parking meter guy who said that he sees all city workers during the day and would ask everyone if they saw a stuffed rabbit. If he wasn’t such a nice guy I would have thought that I would become the butt of his jokes for the rest of the day {I would be known as The Crazy Rabbit Lady by all the city of St. Paul workers}, but he really seemed to take on our cause. Or I should actually say my cause. Because although when I told Abe that we were going to look for rabbit he got excited and said “Thank you very much!,” he hasn’t asked for rabbit since. He has not cried about it. He didn’t have dreams about rabbit all alone last night. His heart doesn’t seem to ache at the thought that we will never see rabbit again. That seems to be all me.

But who knows what our little ones really think and feel. I believe that they feel more than they are able to show. They are little people too, who laugh and cry and love and miss. So I just found a replica {or so I hope!} of rabbit online and couldn’t give them my credit card number fast enough.

I know that it will probably not be the same when Abe sees his new friend. I have made a promise to never to lie to my kids, so he will know that this is a different rabbit. Even if he doesn’t like the new replica of Rabbit, at least I will feel like I did what I could. And isn’t that all we moms can do sometimes?

I thought I would share some of the images I took during our St. Paul walk. This parking garage was perfect! Notice rabbit in one of the shots. Poor rabbit must miss Abe.

{By the way, I know that Abe needs a haircut. I keep waiting to set up a cool “first haircut shoot,” but haven’t had the time so his hair just keeps getting longer and longer. It is getting to the point of us just getting out the kitchen scissors and doing it myself one of these days. Does everything in my life need to be the perfect photo shoot?}

When I originally posted this blog I forgot to include this first image of Abe and I. As I was laying on the ground taking photographs of the kids, Abe decided that he was done with the shoot. He ran to me, threw himself and rabbit on my back and snuggled in. Laughing, I handed the camera to Luke to get this shot.