On Tuesday, three little hand-sewn felt ducks "visited" our house.

Until I found out that they hadn't just wanted a change of scenery, but had been, well, REMOVED from Flipper's classroom without permission and smuggled home in her lunch basket. In other words, stolen, although that seems a bit harsh.

The tears that followed the discovery lasted long enough for me to eat supper, do the dishes, take the dogs out, and come back in. Flipper's reaction to my "suggestion" that they be returned with an apology met with more sobs and defiant statements of NO! IT'S TOO HAAARRRDDD!!!!!

Finally, finally, after this hour-long, exhausting drama (on her part) she fell asleep. I had to time to think about it and realize that this is one of those things many kids do, that she wasn't headed for a life of crime (I hope) and that, hopefully, she would get a small sense of remorse and relief from apologizing and returning the little ducks.

My desire, however, to make it right with a call to her teacher, by returning them myself, by doing SOMETHING was almost overwhelming.

She's too young to understand, my Nice-Mommy voice said. An apology from her doesn't have any meaning yet. She's already so upset; just call her teacher and smooth it over, talk about it, apologize myself ... blessedly, Rational Mommy came to the rescue and kicked Nice Mommy to the curb. Who cares if she cries. Maybe she won't do it again. Most kids hate to apologize. She needs to anyway... and so on.

And on.

As usual, I was in danger of overthinking the whole (minor) incident, and perhaps missing a small moral lesson in the process, I was also in danger of talking about it too much, like I did when she cut her own hair.

So I didn't race to a parenting book, or the Internet, or call a friend. I remembered a story from my own childhood, repeated many times, of picking all the flowers in a neighbor's yard to give to my mother for Mother's Day. A knock on the door, and a hard-wrought apology. Then, until adolescence at least, no more sticky fingers.

The next morning we walked from my office to the kindergarten (I work at her school) and waited for her teacher to arrive. I handed her the ducks, Flipper averted her face and mumbled a "sorry" and her teacher opened her arms and said, "Have they been on a visit?"

Flipper fell into her kind, loving, warm, and accepting embrace, and I went back to my office.

I called my mother to give her the update, and she said, "Well, first of many!" (Thanks, Mom.)

Another crisis averted.

Leigh appears Fridays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Leigh on her blog Flipper and Me.