Where Are My Keys?
When my son H was 18 mo to 2 yrs old, he went through a phase of hiding things. Sometimes I found them (my Kate Spade sunglasses between the bed and mattress when we were moving) and sometimes they were gone forever (a pair of his pajamas and my cell phone). I never figured out whether he had thrown out those things we never found or if they are rolling around in some hidden corner of his toy box waiting to be discovered. Thankfully, he outgrew that stage right when we moved from the limited hiding areas of our 2- bedroom apartment into the wider open spaces of our 3-bedroom townhouse.
I had forgotten that stage until a few days ago when I couldn't find my car keys. I looked all over the house and thought I had suffered the worst case of mommy brain to date. My husband Stewart (former army captain) kept making me feel like I had once again failed to perform an adequate precombat inspection. I wasn't as upset about losing my keys as I was about losing all those little supermarket and drugstore key fobs that were attached to the key chain. I was just 13 points away from getting the $5 reward from Ralphs! Finally, while I was looking for them in the garage (having run out of ideas of where to look in the house), Stewart came up to me and said, "Don't feel bad, they'll pop up somewhere."
The next moment, he dropped them into my hand. After punching him in the stomach, I demanded to know where he had found them. As soon as he told me he found them in the Lego box I knew all of the silent incrimination and berating looks were unjustified. My one-year old R had taken them and put them in the Lego box while we weren't paying attention. It was a "Duh" moment; I should have known and expected this stage was coming in R's development based on experience with H but had been caught unawares anyway.
Two days after this incident, it happened again. My keys were nowhere to be found. This time it was Stewart who had given R the opportunity--he had left them on the kitchen table while making a phone call. So he felt badly about giving me such a hard time the previous time. To look for them, Stewart scooted along on his butt all over the house, trying to look at the world through R's vantage and thinking about where R might have put them. I pleaded with R--where are my keys? Where did you put my keys? If you find them, I will give you chocolate. I told H, if you find the keys, I'll let you watch TV. Sadly for them neither of them was able to find them.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati