Panic

I had that moment that every mother fears today. I couldn’t find my child. I was in Barnes and Noble and turned my back for a second and when I turned around, L was nowhere to be found. I didn’t quite panic then, I calmly looked around where we had been, staying by the front in case she made a break for the doors. But nothing. I finally asked a clerk to help me and we quietly made out way down the middle of the store, to the kids’ section. Nothing. We were going to call a Code Adam and just as I’m giving the clerk a description of L, another woman tells me there’s a child with that description in the toys.

And yes, sitting quietly, playing with some Vtech toys in a quiet aisle, is Linnea. I can’t tell you how happy I was to see her.

But now that she’s asleep, I feel like it’s hitting me that I lost her. I lost my daughter in a store. I found her, but still, I lost her.

Books: Trains, Tales, and a Knuffle Bunny?

We’ve been mostly cooped up here with a cold and this miserable heat, so L and I went to Half Price Books this morning. I had a list on my phone of books I wanted to look for that were mostly gleaned from A Mighty Girl and an article in a parenting magazine on multiculturalism in kids (the Mem Fox book).

Freight Train by Donald Crews

Ella Sarah Gets Dressed by Margaret Chodos-Irvine

Word Girl: Coupon Madness (L sometimes watches it on PBS and it was only 99 cents)

Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems – How could we resist getting a nice hardcover copy of these for only 8 bucks? I’ve been meaning to add it to our home library.

Stella: Queen of the Snow by Marie-Louise Gay

Aunt Isabel Tells a Good One by Kate Duke

Whoever You Are by Mem Fox

We’re turning off Directv for at least a bit, so perhaps the time she spent watching Disney Junior can be reading time. At least some of it. We’re kinda addicted to DJ. I’m going to miss Doc McStuffins, actually. And Octonauts. And my TLC addiction…What Not to Wear is one of my favorite shows.

Together, I am not

It's a quarter to ten and I'm still in my pajamas and L is in the living room playing with the iPad. And she's wearing only a diaper. Real Estate Intervention is on the tv and I'm typing this out on a laptop that's horribly slow because it's currently deleting duplicate files that Duplicate Cleaner found.

We're both getting over a cold and so we both slept in, but really, it's a pretty typical morning. Kitchen is a disaster. I really need to find a way to keep it neat. Quite frankly, I lean towards laziness. Yup, I'm admitting it. I see something out of place and my first thought is not to put it away, it's to ignore it. And so everything piles up. Yet I don't like living like this. I need purpose. Order. Organization.

Well, I'd better go grab the iPad from my daughter and actually do something with her. Perhaps we'll clean together. Nice and educational, right?