Death of a baby

Well we went to Peter Piper Pizza for some old fashioned Friday night fun and it did not end so well. We were playing the "Candy Shoppe" game with our last tokens, getting ready to leave when it happened. I looked at the "Wheel of Fortune" game where we set down our boxed pizza, soda, and Madeline's baby doll. I look back at the kids to make sure they were still there, then back at "Wheel of Fortune" and lo and behold in a three second time frame, Madeline's baby was actually gone. Now I'm not going to speculate too much on how it happened, but WHY. Why someone would want the stinkiest, dirtiest, old, ripped baby is beyond me. If a child had taken it, you think their parents would put it somewhere or return that stinky thing to the counter. Didn't happen. We searched literally every nook and cranny looking for this baby that Maddie absolutely cannot live without for over half an hour. We've had many close calls in the past. One time last week Mad dropped her in the parking lot and I drove back an hour later frantically looking for baby while Mad was having a meltdown. Luckily someone had picked baby up in the lot and gave her to the cashier in the store. Peter Piper Pizza is not that big!!! I do not know how we managed to loose baby right under our noses in three seconds. We had to leave because the kids were getting cranky, so we left our number and had the guy make an announcement, "If anyone has seen a pink baby doll, please return it to the front counter." Thank you Peter Piper employee, but no luck. Fortunately, we have a spare at home. Unfortunately, Madeline has been rejecting this spare ever since her grandma tried to replace her raggedy one with this look-alike impostor on her second birthday (original baby was a gift from grandma on her first birthday). So we rushed the kids into the bathtub, buying ourselves time. I watched the kids splash around while Nathan grabbed impostor baby, ripped off both arms, uncurled her hair, ripped the "baby's first doll" label off of her chest, and went outside to rub her in the dirt!!! When Maddie asked for her baby, we said, "Oh we found her! She is very dirty!" (trying to convince her that this is baby number one, not impostor baby). She took a good whiff of baby, something that she always does, and said, "No! She's too dirty!" So we hesitated, afraid this would not work because Mad really knows the way her other baby smells, which is weird but the truth (she always hold baby up to her nose and mouth for comfort). We told her we'd wash her, and after we did she seemed a little too clean but Madeline actually bought it! Praise the heavens, it's a miracle! Nathan immediatly left to run to Target to grab another one in case she said "this is not my baby!" So that we could show her the new one and trick her into thinking imposter baby is the real one. Two Target's were sold out so we didn't get another one, but thankfully Mad went to bed with no questions asked. From now on I am leaving baby in the car if we go somewhere, lesson learned for the 20th time. It's probably a good thing we replaced that germy, dirty thing because it was starting to seem unsanitairy...goodbye baby number one, if Peter Piper never calls, we enjoyed having you in our lives!