Missing Duckie

At AJ's preschool, on Fridays, they get to take home a Book Buddy.  It's a book with a corresponding stuffed animal packaged nicely in a little bag.  They do somewhat of a library system, where they check it out on Friday and check it back in on Monday.
AJ loves Book Buddy day.  And often he finds one Book Buddy that he loves and checks it out repeatedly week after week.  Most of the time, he could care less about the book, but LOVES the animal is comes with.

Several weeks ago he brought home Duckie.  Duckie went with the book THE HUNGRY DUCKLING. AJ LOVED Duckie.  We even have a video of Duckie saying Psalm 23 with us. 

However, come Monday, we could not find Duckie anywhere.  Anywhere.  So we went back to school and told the teacher that Duckie was missing, but sure it would turn up by Wednesday.

During the course of the next week, I scoured our house and went through everything I could think of, plus I checked places that I couldn't image it would be trying to find this little duck.  It became personal and I was completely baffled.   Each time I went to preschool I would apologize to the teacher and even asked it I could replace the duck with another duck from the store.  (Apparently they are a special set and not any old duck would do).

AJ's teacher is very sweet and asked us to just to forget about it and not worry about it and then it would just show up.  So we did... or I tried. That missing duck drove me crazy.

But one day, a couple weeks later, sure enough AJ came running up to me with Duckie in his hands yelling, "I found Duckie!, I found Duckie".  Way back in the back part of his undies (clean undies) drawer, was Duckie.  Actually that drawer is pretty deep, so it makes sense that we wouldn't have seen him there.  I don't know how he got there.

The next day, I was working and my friend was dropping AJ off at school. So Duckie got sent to school with a ribbon around his neck and a note explaining where he was hiding.  AJ's teacher thought it was hilarious.

Needless to say, last Friday, once again Duckie found his way back home.  Hopefully we keep track of him this time.  At least we know his favorite hiding place.