MIA: Doggy

REWARD

For the safe return of "Doggy"$2 from Aidan

1$ from Leo

We have sent out the search and rescue. Doggy is missing in action. Leo's special stuffed animal known to everyone as "doggy" is missing. We have searched high and low, retraced our steps, and called in the reserves (Doris) to look for doggy with no luck.

We have cleaned the boys' rooms from top to bottom, tore off the sheets, removed all the stuffed animals, picked up their closets, searched under the beds and we can not find doggy. We looked in our room, in our closets, under our bed and we can not find doggy. We can not find him downstairs, under the couches, in the car, or in the extra bedroom. We can not find him any where!?!

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being "whatever" and 10 wailing crying Leo is about a 5 and Aidan is about a 7. Leo said he was sad, yelled at Doris one day that he "didn't wanna talk about it" and asked me if I thought Doggy was scared. Aidan wants to know why Leo isn't more broken up about it and if I was sad. This was good opportunity to talk about Aidan's new vocabulary word, "grieve" that he learned during their school lesson on "Hansel and Gretal". I explained to him that people "grieve" in different ways...some people cry, some people just want to be alone, and some people are their normal selves but that all ways were okay.

Not to get too far down a tangent but Hansel and Gretal is a crazy story for 1st graders to read.

Here are the major points of the story:

1. Dad remarries to a mean lady

2. Dad abandons children deep in the woods

3. Children are on the verge of starving (other vocabulary word taught was "famine")

4. Children pig out on candy house

5. Crazy old lady kidnaps kids

6. Crazy old lady forces Gretal to be her domestic servant

7. Crazy old lady locks Hansel in cage to plump him up to eat him

8. Gretal pushes old lady into burning oven

9. Old lady dies a terribly painful death

10. Children return home and live happily ever after with Dad because Step mom dies

Great! That is not at all scary for 7 year-old first graders.

Back on point: So we are all sad we can't find doggy and we are all totally perplexed as to where he could possibly be. Leo asked me if I thought doggy was scared and I told him probably not because he gets to sleep all day which doggy loves and when Aidan asked if I was sad I said "yes" but that doggy lived a long and good life. Aidan totally agreed. We reminisced about doggy's history, born in Switzerland, entered our life as a gift from Jennifer and Craig (our special friends in Geneva) to Aidan and then was specially selected by Leo to love.

Any ideas of where doggy could be. If you find him there is a $3 reward!