So yeah, I am feeling extremely down about losing this teddy bear. It's not like it's Liam's must-have teddy bear or anything. It means more to me than it really means to him at this point, but I did want to start giving it to him in his crib so that he'd become more attached to it.

A friend from work, Melanie, made it for him. It matches his bedding, which is an Australian theme (kangaroos and such). For this reason, we named it Mel from Melbourne.

I almost feel like I am more down about the human spirit right now than I am about the actual loss of the bear itself.

I have one theory, and I may be completely off. I gave it to Liam in the cake mix section at Publix. He was getting antsy. I gave him a block, and he threw it on the floor. I gave him his sippy cup, and he threw that on the floor. I don't know what made me think that the teddy bear wouldn't end up there, too.

He must have thrown it on the floor when I turned away to pick up a couple cans of frosting. I don't remember seeing it any later than that.

There was a pregnant girl, maybe 2 or 3 years older than me, about 3 feet away from me the whole time I was trying to calm Liam down. I remember thinking of saying "see what you have to look forward to?" but thought better of it. She was so close to us, and she was definitely hanging around deep in thought about cake mixes after we left. She HAD to have seen it. She could have tracked us down and given it back, or at the very least turned it in to customer service. Did she leave it on the floor? Did she pick it up thinking it would be a really nice toy for her new baby?

If she really, truly went the other way and did not see it all, then SOMEONE picked it up to give to another child or outright threw it away. It just gets me really down to think that someone can up and walk away, for whatever reason, with a child's toy, especially one that was so obviously hand-knitted especially for him.

I would like to think "well, hopefully our loss has made another child's day." I'm sorry, though, I can't. Someone put a lot of time and effort into that bear to make it just for Liam, and I had planned on keeping it forever as one of his special toys.

Believe it or not, I've prayed that the bear will come back to us somehow. I keep checking with customer service, and the guy who cooks the samples and says "hi" to Liam every time we pass by is keeping his eye out for it. We'll see. In the meantime, I didn't realize that losing a teddy bear would ever make me so super-sad.