Middle of the Floor

There are times, especially when Todd is away for work, that I feel like both the best and worst version of myself.  The best because I'm on top of things.  I'm organized.  I've planned and things are getting done.  Worst because, well, I miss my husband.  I miss him when I have to bath the kids.  I miss him when Harper wakes up at 5-dark-thirty and wants to play.  I miss him when I'm trying to wrestle Em out of the top bunk to use the toilet just one more time before really going to sleep.

Today, was no exception.  I had all four kids dressed before 8.  I had dropped the two older ones at school, lunches packed, pumpkin-oat pancakes in their bellies, and the kitchen was clean.  CLEAN PEOPLE!  But I was frayed around the edges.  Zora is currently in a sleeping funk.  I say that with all the love I have in me but seriously, Baby Girl has got to give a mommy more than 2 hours of consecutive sleep.  There's not enough coffee in the world to overcome this sleep strike she's on... because, you know, I'm still hoping that tonight is going to be THE ONE.  THE night when she remembers that sleep is a glorious and blessed time to be still and commune with the pillow, or mattress in her case.

So when I'd finally gotten her down for a nap, I'd sorted out dinner and the kitchen and laundry and the likes, I decided that I needed a shower to wake me up, and get to smelling a bit more like Dove and a bit less like foot.  It wasn't even my foot smell, but anyways.  I took a quick shower only to get out to a wide awake baby.  Good times.  I called Harper, but no response.  Called her again.  Nothing.

Now I'm angry.

Harper.

Adeline.

Leslie.

Nada.

Grabbed some clothes and threw them on with my hair still wet.  She is literally nowhere to be found.  I looked in rooms, closets, cupboards- nothing.  I looked in the compost (ew, right?).  Under the trampoline, behind the fruit in the kitchen.  Still, nothing.  Then, I ran outside.  Our complex is small.  I recognized a cleaning lady and asked if she'd seen Harper.  No.  The handyman said that same.  They trotted off (neither has been seen to do anything faster than a Sunday saunter before this event, so this was literally historic) to find the gardner.  Now the gardner for our complex is a sweeter, older gentleman who is missing a few teeth and really only says a few words in English.  I know he knows more, but I somehow always get the same response from him, "Okay, very good, very good!"  There is now a gang looking for Harper, a baby screaming in her cot and a mom freaking out because how do you lose a child when everything is locked and there's a vicious-looking dog in your back garden?  Seriously, its like messing up rice.  Inconceivable!

But, this IS Harper, after all.  My child who has so much... personality and charisma, even in pictures  (translation: she's got her mother's stubborn manifesto written on her DNA.)  By this point, I'm sweaty (so much for the shower!) and mentally trying to figure out the next step.  Who would one call?  I know these numbers in the US by heart but I babysat for a decade there, I've never lost a dog, let alone another human being in South Africa!

I went back to the house to sort out the baby and try to figure out how she could even REACH the front door, let alone unlock and turn the handle.  Impossible.  So I go back to the cupboards and in one, I realize there's a blanket missing.  So then I start hunting for the blanket.  Call it a hunch.  I find said blanket in the MIDDLE OF THE LIVING ROOM FLOOR.  I must have stepped/leapt over it half a dozen times in the previous 20 minutes of frantic chaos.  I touch it.  It's solid.  Blankets are not supposed to be solid.

When I pulled the blanket back, Harper's sweaty face turns towards me and she very dreamily says, "Shhh, Mommy, Dolly is counting for hide-and-seek."

I missed my child, in the middle of the floor, for twenty minutes.  Did this make me the World's Worst Mother in the Whole, Wide, World?  Possibly.  I sure felt it, that's for sure.  But after a bit, when Sleeping Beauty finally woke from her nap and was strapped into her carseat, she says to me, "Mommy, thanks for playing with me.  Dolly wasn't very good and I like snuggling with you."  Maybe I'm not THE worst, maybe not yet anyways... or at least, not today.