"I just don't know what I did with my glasses!" Axel said as he removed a mug from the cupboard for his morning OJ. It was a grey November day - cold, but not bitterly so.

I sighed as I put peanut butter on slice of toast. "We know, we know! They're your favorite pair." We'd been hearing about their absence for what seemed like forever. He loves the wire-rim ones, they're the ones that look best on him, the other ones squeeze his temples... you get the idea.

"Well, how long has it been? I mean, did you have them when you traveled this summer?" I ask, setting a purple Fred Flintstone vitamin in front of Little L.

He sits down at the living room table. "I did have them," he says.

"Really? Well when was the last time you saw them?" I say, taking a sip of my coffee.

Little L picked up Fred Flintstone and examined him closely. "Mama, do you wish you could have this?" she asked. I nodded. The smell of Flintstone vitamins wafted over my way as she placed it under my nose. Sometimes she offers to give me one, and sometimes I accept. Today I smiled and pushed it back her way.

"I feel like it was just a few weeks ago when I saw them last," Axel says. A few weeks? I've heard him talk about the missing glasses at least a thousand times. "Maybe I should try your mom's trick."

In case you've forgotten the Phone Fiasco, when I misplaced my sunglasses at the end of the night, my mom pulled up some photos from the day and informed me I'd had them on the floor next to me while we ate cake but that I'd had on my regular glasses right as I was leaving. She's a photo-taker, that one.

Once we finished breakfast, we headed over to Axel's parents' house in St. Paul. Axel sat on the gray love seat, his face glued to his phone. Just as I was about to accuse him of being anti-social, he yelped, "A-HA!"

He had located a photo of himself from a day we'd gathered at the park with a few friends. "Look what I'm wearing!" he said, zooming in and turning the phone towards us.

Little L was running around dressed as a mermaid, trying to get her grandpa to play the "Zzzzt" game where he tries to poke her and she runs off giggling. She had no interest in these favorite glasses of Axel's. But I was intrigued. A clue. Only five weeks ago? I thought the glasses had been gone much longer than that.

I got out my own phone and joined in the search. He'd had them that day at the park. But look - the very next day, as we'd been cheering for the Twin Cities Marathon, he was wearing a different pair of glasses. Had that morning been the first time we'd heard his daily refrain? I can't find my glasses.

I returned to the photos of the day at the park. Yes, in one photo Axel had his precious wire-rimmed glasses on. But in the very next photo, the glasses were no longer on his face. They were hanging precariously from his shirt.

Later that evening, back at home, Axel started pulling jackets and pants out of drawers and closets. He located the shirt from the photo, but there was nothing in the front pocket. He looked in a box of outdoor toys we had carried with us to the park that day. Was it with the frisbees and jump rope?

Nada.

"Well, we could always go back to the park and look," he said, rubbing his temples, which I assume his plastic glasses had been squeezing.

I laughed. "It's been over a month!"

But the next day when the two of us headed out for a walk, I said, "Should we try the park?"

As we approached, we talked strategy. "Let's check the picnic tables," Axel said. "Someone might have set them there."

No luck at the picnic tables. Axel surveyed the playground equipment. We looked for broken glass too, but luckily we didn't spot any sign of foul play.

They clearly weren't here. But since Axel is not one to give up, I busied myself walking around the field. "Weren't you playing frisbee?" I asked, thinking of the perilously perched glasses I had seen in the picture. I spent some time near the tree that Little L had been climbing that day. Had he set them down on the bench nearby?

"Here they are!" Axel called from across the field. He sounded almost nonchalant.

Ah, he's kidding me, I thought, walking over.

"Look. Right there," he said, pointing. Since I had my glasses on, I was able to see them as I approached from afar. There, indeed, were his wire rim glasses. And they weren't even broken.

"Are you serious?" I took off my sunglasses and knelt down. He picked them up, then I had him put them back down so I could snap a photo. This was shaping up to be a blogworthy search.

Axel and I walked home, crunching through a few random leaves, hats pulled tight over our ears. "It's good we found them today!" he said, examining the bows of the glasses. "Tomorrow it's going to snow."

In fact, it had already snowed at least once. Good thing it melted so that I didn't have to hear about the glasses until spring.

More than once over the course of the past month, I'd encouraged Axel to just "let it go." The glasses, that is. He didn't. Wouldn't? Couldn't?

Now he had them back.