The missing baby

Cliff and I often get down in the floor (painfully, at times) to play with the Fischer-Price Little People stuff I've gradually collected for Cora.  When I first started buying all this stuff, it seemed outrageously expensive; but Cora has enjoyed it all so much, it's been worth every penny.  

As soon as she arrives each morning, as soon as she has kicked off her cowboy boots and peeled off her stockings because, at Grandma Donna's house, the girls go barefoot, she usually reaches toward Cliff or me.. or both of us... and says, "Pay wis me," pointing toward the toy house and barn that are always stationed in the living room.  We eventually take turns playing with Cora and the Little People because, hey, what else are we doing?  We're retired.  Certainly nothing is more important than make-believe play with tiny plastic people in their house and barn!  

Cliff tends to be more creative in his play than I am.  See, I have this need to keep all the Little People and animals together in their tiny world and leaving other toys, those that don't belong, in the toy box.  Cliff mixes in other elements.  

Also, the farm animals poop when Cliff is in charge.  Sheesh.

Cora is great about keeping all these elements separated from other, non-Little-People toys.  At this point I really don't plan to buy any more of the stuff, although I've often wished it were possible to buy the fence pieces separately, because we have a lot of animals and need larger pens.  You can't buy individual animals or people, either:  they only come in certain sets, so you have to buy a whole set if there's one critter you're looking for.

A couple of weeks ago, the Little People baby came up missing.  I first noticed this because that day Cora chose to be in charge of the barn and I got the house.  There's a nursery in the house, so of course I needed the baby in order to set my little world right.  Search as we might, we couldn't find the baby; days later I was still repeatedly searching while Cora, tired of helping me look, would simply hand me a different child figure, expecting me to use some bigger kid as my baby!  Ha!  

I searched the Internet for a way to buy another baby, but there was none to be found without buying a whole other house.  I looked under furniture, beneath couch cushions, in bathroom trash cans (because sometimes Cora takes one of the figures with her when she goes to potty).  I looked in the toy box, where we NEVER keep the Little People, but I thought perhaps the baby had been thrown in by accident by someone who didn't know the rules.  

At some point last week I gave up.  I would just have to use one of the other kids as my baby.

Yesterday Cora was pulling toys out of the toy box one by one; like most toddlers, she never stops until every toy is pulled out and thrown on the floor in a pile.  When she picked up the John Deere dump truck, something she seldom plays with, she looked at it closely, held it toward me, and said, "Baby" as calmly as could be.  At that moment, I recalled seeing Cliff, as he was playing with Cora several days before, somehow fitting the baby into the truck to drive.

I might have known Cliff was responsible for this travesty!  Anybody knows babies can't drive!

But all is forgiven, because the baby is back.

The empty nursery will once again be filled with the cooing and fretting of a baby.

And we all lived happily ever after.  The end.