A Sophie The Giraffe Induced Panic Attack

**Up front I need to apologize for the ridiculous amount of ALL CAPS used in this post.  It's out of control, but this story kind of lends itself to a fair amount of ALL CAPS action.  Consider yourself forewarned!**

If you're not the parent of a young child you may not know about Sophie The Giraffe. She's been in the top 10 of Amazon's top 100 baby toys for at least the last three years. What is this amazing toy you ask? What cool things can she do?

She is a rubber giraffe.
She is approximately 7 inches tall.
She squeaks.

The end.

Now if you're a little confused and think that you must be missing some detail because something that seems to be nothing more than a squeaky dog toy cannot possibly be so popular, YOU ARE WRONG.

Baby C (and presumably many other babies around the U.S. as well) loves Sophie.  She easy to grip and C loves chewing on her legs.

She also retails for $25 (!!!!!)

Ridiculous, I know.  But it's Sophie!  Now, Baby C isn't particularly attached to any of his toys, Sophie included, but he does really seem to like her.  Apparently I'm the one with the attachment to Sophie.

This past weekend Sister W, Baby C, and I went to the mall for some holiday shopping.  We had only gone to a few stores and while we were in the very crowded hallway of busy shoppers Sister W looks into the stroller at C and says, "Where is his giraffe?"

I wish you could have seen my reaction.  SHEER PANIC.  Ridiculous, hands covering my face, blood pressure rising, over-the-top panic.  Sister W thought I was totally insane (which I was at the time).

Via Pinterest from source

In my panic-driven FIND SOPHIE! mode, I immediately decided that Sister W and I needed to split up to retrace our steps because TIME WAS OF THE ESSENCE PEOPLE!  It's like a missing child- your chances are better at finding them the closer you are to the time of the kidnapping.  See this crazy thinking I had going on??  I'm comparing the loss of a RUBBER GIRAFFE to a MISSING CHILD.

Oh, I should also mention that Baby C was not concerned in the least bit about Sophie being missing.  Not. one. little. bit.  Nope, this crazy reaction was all mine.  And to give you an even better idea of how completely over the top my reaction was, we had only been to 3 stores.  Yup.  It's not like we had traversed the entire mall and our search was going to be akin to finding a needle in a haystack...we literally had only walked into 3 stores.

So Sister W headed in to store A that we had just left and I headed back to store B.  And by "headed back" I mean that I was power walking at max speed and weaving through the crowded mall of holiday shoppers with Baby C in the stroller.  I get to store B and waste no time in finding an employee to tell them of my plight.  "I was in here about 15-20 minutes ago and we lost a rubber giraffe toy.  Has anyone found it?"  The person was very nice and gets on their radio (this was a large, two-level store) and over the radio asks all other workers if anyone has found a rubber giraffe.  I could hear how ridiculous this sounded and I didn't care one single bit.  No luck.  I retraced my steps and went up to the second floor and asked ANOTHER employee if anyone had found a rubber giraffe and he got on the radio AGAIN for me.  Still no luck.  At this point I run into the first employee who had helped me and she must have seen the panic in my expression because regardless of how ridiculous this whole thing seemed, she was totally in my corner.  She even offered to take my name and number in case it turned up later.

Seriously??  I eagerly left my name and number with the store as a last shred of hope that Sophie might turn up.  As I type this, I still can't believe how insane I was acting.  And that someone actually offered to talk my name and number over a lost rubber giraffe.

Now, I have to pause for a moment in this story to tell you that during this whole fiasco Hubby G was at work and upon the discovery of Sophie's disappearance, I texted him to keep him updated on the clearly dire situation I had on my hands.

Me: We are on a hunt for Sophie :( C threw him out of the stroller somewhere...I'm ready to cry :(
Hubby G: Oh no, back track... he needs Sophie!
Me: I'm frantically searching :(
Hubby G: How far back do you have to look?  Ask store clerks that you were by to see if someone handed it in.  You can ask security too.

Clearly from this exchange you can see that Hubby G was at least somewhat in the same mind frame as me- as I kept trying to tell Sister W, "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND! IT'S NOT JUST A TOY- IT'S SOPHIE!"

Sister W met back up with me and to my dismay she was empty handed.  I had just remembered that there was one more store that we had briefly walked in to, and although my hopes weren't high for finding Sophie, you bet I was going to look every place I could possibly think of.

We walk into Store C and I explain to the employee that I'm looking for a rubber giraffe toy that may have been dropped in the store about 20 minutes ago and she says, "Oh yeah..." and walks back to the register.

A tidal wave of relief washed over me.  From behind the counter she pulls out our beloved Sophie.  The girl probably thought I was absolutely insane with the amount of enthusiastic thanks that I gave her.  "Thank you SO much! You have NO IDEA how relieved I am!"  The girl was like, "Sure..." and was totally wierded out.  Justifiably so.

I cannot believe that I had a complete Mommy Meltdown over a rubber giraffe.  Ask anyone that knows me, I am one of the most even-keeled people you will ever meet and I panicked over the temporary loss of Sophie The Giraffe.  No joke, when I was regaling this story to a few of my co-workers today I even got worked up just in the retelling of the tale- what is wrong with me?!?

No worries though, I have come up with a solution to cure my ridiculousness.  Sophie is getting a stroller leash.  Totally normal.