I don’t know what has made me think of it, but I just started thinking about Zoe’s Sleepy Bear today and really miss him. It’s a sad tragic story of his disappearance. The picture above is Zoe with her “Sleepy Bear” in 2005.

Sleepy Bear was Zoe’s cuddly toy for bedtimes/naptimes/and general security needs. She’d had him from the time she was about 9 month old on. He helped her learn to fall asleep, survive nursery during those hard separation anxiety times, and generally made her happy. He went on all our overnight trips and an occasional trip to Wal-Mart (always in the car while we shopped). We, unfortunately, only had one of him because when we found out that cuddly toys would work great for getting babies to sleep, her bear had been discontinued. Oh well, she was attached to him right from the start. On our vacation this summer, we stayed overnight, at a hotel on the way up and then on the way back.

I think that on the way back, we were in such a hurry to get home, that we didn’t really scan the room for any leftovers. We believe that Sleepy Bear “slept in” and decided to stay at the hotel. Ughhhh, we got home that night and searched high and low for him but he never turned up.

And Zoe’s attitude…she was fine with it. Mark and I were almost in tears. Her cuddly from infanthood….disappeared. She picked another animal and slept with it and even decided to call one of her other bears Sleepy Bear.

Mark searched in vain for Sleepy Bear calling for days. I think the hotel people just thought we were absolutely crazy to be looking for it…he did look a little ragged and worn and needed a bath badly. And to think, he’s hanging out in the dump somewhere with no one to sleep with him! I’m still sad just thinking about it.

Fortunately, we had learned our lesson after spending hours searching for Sleepy Bear on several occasions. All of the kids have two cuddly toys (although Ace is down to one as one disappeared in D.C. last year). They also have popular ones that shouldn’t be discontinued for a little while and should be easy to find.