How not to lose your child’s favourite toy, or the tale of Rainbow Dash and the Comedy of Errors

They say those who don’t learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them and WE LOST ONE OF MY CHILDREN’S FAVOURITE TOYS. AGAIN. And I have no idea how it happened.

(It’s this one!)

Two years ago Eliza’s favourite toy had an extended trip up to Sheffield when we left it behind after a weekend away. Toys in our house must really like to travel, because when we went away recently Florence’s My Little Pony, Rainbow Dash, appears not to have returned along with us.

I’m still not entirely sure how this happened. We kept the pony on a really short reign fearing *exactly* this sort of scenario. But shortly after we got back, in the middle of the night, there was a wail of  ‘I want Rainbow Dash!’ Shortly followed by the cold, trickle of fear, ice-in-the-stomach feeling of dread when we realised that the horse appeared to have bolted.

And here followed a series of tragi-comedic events where it all went slightly awry. This is how not to lose your child’s favourite toy, or what happened next:

• We panic. But wait! It’s a fairly generic toy so smugly realise we’d surely have no issues buying one (unlike last time)
• Shortly after this, discover that it’s a fairly generic toy that lots of people want for Christmas
• Finally track one down from an online store that sounds a lot like Glamazon, with a ‘reliable’ next day delivery service that kind of rhymes with wine, if you drink enough. It’s never let us down when ordering things like screen wipes or radiator screws or any one of those millions of non-important things we order all the time, so surely it’ll be fine with this crucial item. Right?
• Tell small child that Rainbow Dash is ‘on holiday’
• After four days of fruitless chasing, hair tearing and ‘When’s Rainbow Dash coming home?’ realise that we’ve backed the wrong horse and cancel lost Glamazon order
• Chase another pony down online but discover, upon opening the giant box it arrives in, that it houses a giant toy as someone – someone! – bought the wrong size *ahem*
• Attempt to persuade child that the giant toy is really exactly the same, especially with a genius cover story devised by her older sister (‘Rainbow Dash met a witch on holiday who made her really big.’)
• Think we’ve got away with it…for about five minutes until she casts it aside saying ‘I don’t want BIG Rainbow Dash…where’s Little Rainbow Dash?’

So, how not to lose your child’s favourite toy? Here’s some top tips directly from the horse’s mouth:

• When buying toys, buy the most easily replaceable toys you can find. Like, you know, a can of baked beans (‘What do you mean it’s cold, unforgiving and uncomfortable to hug?’)
• Don’t lose it in the run-up to Christmas when things are in short supply. Ideally, don’t lose it ever
• Buy fifty spares and keep them under lock and key, in the world’s safest safe, in a concrete room, surrounded by metal walls and guarded by fifty clones of The Rock
• Don’t let the original toy leave the house
• DON’T EVER LEAVE THE HOUSE YOURSELF (well, as parents of small children will know, that’s not hard)

We finally tracked down the right-sized one and are now in the fortunate (?) position where we have a house full of various sizes of ponies.

And a big sister who really really wants a new giant pony of her own. But that’s another tale for another day…

More posts…things they don’t tell you in NCT (like things like this will happen) post-natal depletion – do you have it? And if baby milestone cards were made for mums P.S. Emoji ‘art’ of sad giant Rainbow Dash courtesy of my friend Nick