tragedy strikes

Bella lost her giraffe (her pink lovey) on the way home from vacation. She went into the gas station with Randy to buy herself some gum and I think she was just so excited carrying her purse and buying the gum with her own money she set it down and forgot about it. It has been with us for four and a half years and it is so very helpful! We bought two when she was born for this very reason and switched them out occasionally. One day as a two year old she cut the tags- her favorite thing about the thing! I panicked and instead of letting her handle the natural consequences, I switched them out. She was smarter than I thought she was though because she knew the tags were back and once when I was washing that one I slipped her the one with cut tags and she immediately wanted the "other raffy! other raffy" to which I responded, "What are you talking about? There is only one raffy." Yeah right. I dug myself into a hole and learned my lesson. I ditched the one with no tags and she has held onto the other one for two more years until just this past Saturday. I think I was more heartbroken than she was. She has done fine going to bed every night (3 nights so far) until tonight. She left her replacement animal, a lamb, at her friend's today and cried herself to sleep. If only we still had the darn giraffe. I saw one on ebay for $25 (we only paid $10 originally) but in the picture it looked like that tag had been cut! That is the whole reason we need one so I guess we are out of luck. I did learn, however, during my online search for another one that they were recalled a while ago!! Crazy. We tried calling the gas station but haven't had any luck yet. Maybe it was just his time...