Found!

You might think that a red-letter day at our house would be when Clara goes up and down our trecherous stairs alone, learns to jump, swims on her own, is potty trained or finally decides it would be better to drink milk out of a cup than her precious bottle. We are still looking forward to all these events, but a true red-letter day at our house is when MAGNETIC DOG IS FOUND!!!!!!!! Some explanation is required. Clara has this puzzle with doors that open on magnetic farm animal pieces. About 6 months ago, the dog piece disappeared, introducing into Clara's vocabulary the words "miss" (missing) and "lost." Since our poor daughter lives in a house with a mother who has photographed all her toys and posted the photos on her shelves with corresponding labels so everything will always be put away exactly where it came from, lost was a new concept. And EVERY DAY for the last six months (unless we were out of town) Clara has opened the dog's door on her puzzle, said "dog?" and then crawled around on her hands and knees lifting chair skirts and looking under every piece of furniture in the living room while saying "Dog? Miss." Soooooooooo sad, let me tell you. And so today when I moved the couch to vacuum and spotted a tiny sliver of black peeking out from under the baseboard that was not there the last 75 times I looked, my heart started to beat faster. Could it be? YES! IT WAS! DOG HAS BEEN FOUND!!!!! Can you hear the sighs of relief? They're quite loud.