A Very Sad Goodbye?

Oh you guys, I think we might have lost kiki and possibly for good (I suppose there is a slim chance some of you don't know what kiki is, it's Scout's beloved blanket). Scout and I went to the outlet stores at Park City this week and kiki joined us of course. We went to a lot of stores and played on the playground there and on the way home, Scout asked for kiki and I couldn't find it. I pulled over and looked everywhere to no avail. I'm not going to lie, this has happened before. When your child takes something EVERYWHERE, they are sure to leave it, no matter how important. Kiki has spent the night at Barnes and Noble, Kid to Kid, and Bruce's house. Some kind soul has always recognized it as being important to someone and turned it in.
Well, I drove the ten miles we had driven before we noticed the loss, and I spent over an hour going back to every dang store we had visited at that huge place and no one had seen it. The very nice ladies at Carter's were very helpful and took my name and a description and explained that the mall's policy on lost items is to turn them into the mall offices (I was worried we lost it on the sidewalk and it was turned into some random store we didn't go to). She offered to call them for me in the morning and call me back. I didn't get a call from her, so I called the mall offices myself and talked to someone who hadn't seen it, but she took my number too and offered to call me if it shows up. That was two days ago and I haven't heard from anyone.
Scout has been totally stoic about it, breaking down only once, last night, she started to cry and said, "mommy, I miss kiki!" I told her we would look for it and explained the possibility that we might not find kiki and wondered what she would think if we bought a new kiki that looked exactly the same (I have seen them fairly recently at Babies R Us) . She seemed ok by this, so we'll see. I've put together a little slideshow of some pictures of Scout with kiki and I have to tell you, I've been crying like a baby since I made it. I had no idea it would make me so sad. The song I added doesn't help. (It's from Toy Story 2)

I thought I would share a few things about kiki. She was a gift from Catherine at my baby shower. I had registered for it and was so impressed with how soft it was, I guess I brought it up a lot and Cath figured she better buy it. She has been Scout's constant companion since day one and was a matched set with a binki at bedtime, you gave her the binki and put kiki next to her face and that was all Scout ever needed to drift off. It inspired us to say, "Smoke and a pancake? Pipe and a Crepe? Blitz and a bong?" (Austin Powers reference, if you're confused) We took the binki away when Scout was 11 months and since then, Scout has clung to kiki as if her life depended on it. It got it's name one day when we were looking through a photo album and Scout would point to pictures that had kiki in them and would go ck! ck! we were like, "she is pointing at her blanket!" This was before she could talk. She had come up with a sound in the word blanket, and applied it. So ck ck eventually became kiki and it has stuck.
Well, this is really sad for me, if you know Scout you know kiki and I can't imagine it's gone forever.
While typing this, Rob came home from playing basketball and saw me sheepishly sitting at the computer bawling. I told him what I was doing and we rehashed the incident and he assured me that people don't always follow through with their notes, etc. So, I have a new hope of just driving out there again and seeing what I can do on foot. It's totally worth it. So wish me luck! I am going to do my best effort to find her!

****Update****

Well, we did our best, this morning Scout and I went back to Park City and asked around. We started at the mall offices and the lady was very nice but had no kiki. She gave Scout a balloon though and wrote a description down in a binder, along with our number, so if it ever shows up, it is in the binder. We went back to all the stores too, but had no luck. Scout piped up every time someone asked if we needed help saying, "We can't find kiki" it was so cute. She was a doll about it and we left the mall determined to buy a new one. We went to the Orem Babies R Us and they didn't have it!! They had every other color under the sun, but only the green and purple would do. Well, the day was devoted to kiki and we had invested most of it anyway, so we trudged up to Midvale to try our luck. Scout fell asleep and I carried her little sleeping body into our last hope and there it was, there was 1 hanging up amidst the others. I snatched it and bought it and was strapping Scout in the car when she woke up. I got in and told her I had a surprise for her and unwrapped it and took the tags and ribbon off and put it over her. Oh, she was just pure joy. It was so cute. She told me about a hundred times on the way home that we found kiki and that she was back, we also remarked quite a bit about how clean kiki was. (Trust me when I say, kiki looked every bit it's 3 years and then some) I didn't correct her about it being back or found, I just let her be happy.
We stopped by the library on the way home and she wouldn't let go even in the bathroom (did I mention she is pretty much potty trained?) She had to do her business with kiki in her hands.
She has mentioned tonight that kiki is new, but doesn't seem to phased about the fact that it is not the original. This does my heart a lot of good. Rob called me a few times during the day asking how I was. When I told him Scout seemed ok with it all, he wanted to know if I was ok too. He's cute. He knew how upset I was last night. I am good today, I re watched the slideshow and shed a tear or two, but I'll be ok.

And Scout? Well, Scout's back to business as usual........