Lost and Found

In a household the size of ours there are lots of places to misplace or lose items. Add to the size of the house the number of occupants (9) and the ages of the younger occupants (6, 5, 5, 1) and it's no wonder that items sometimes go missing for weeks on end.

After we got back from our trip to Europe one of our eight household phones was missing. The battery was dead by then, so we couldn't page it. We had to seek it out. It was Kara's upstairs phone and she didn't care much that it was missing, so it stayed missing. I finally got tired of giving her my phone when a call came in for her when we were upstairs and then having to track the phone back down because I have to have a phone in my room at night in case my mother phones from the lowest floor needing help. I told the children I'd give $5 to anyone who found the phone. We then went hunting and looking for the phone. I found it, so none of the children made $5. It had slipped between Kara's headboard and her mattress. It's a common place for items to go missing, but Kara assured me she had looked there for it. I looked harder because I cared that we had a missing phone.

For Christmas Santa brought Bentley and Jake two sets of Star Wars days of the week socks. They really like them and the socks have helped Jake learn the days of the week. Socks as a teaching tool! I wondered how long it would be before we started losing socks. There have been some missing for a week or more, so I was amazed to find when I helped the boys with their laundry last week that they both had all 14 socks accounted for. An incredible record for seven months of constant use! (The boys don't need my help doing laundry, but I was enjoying spending time with them. They are quite amusing children!)

The latest lost item that bothered me was Lincoln's blue striped overalls. These pants were Kara's when she was baby. All of the boys have worn them. Viva had a pink pair which was also her mother's. When Ruth was visiting we gave Ada the pink pair and we joked about getting a photo of Ada and Lincoln wearing the overalls, but we couldn't find the blue striped ones. I thought they'd turn up when the laundry was washed, but they didn't. While Kara was in the hospital I did a concentrated search for them. I looked in all of Lincoln's drawers, all the clean laundry, and all the dirty laundry baskets, but no overalls. I asked Kara if she'd put them away because they were getting short. She said she had not. I had to concede defeat. Then last week when I did Viva and Lincoln's laundry, there they were at the bottom of the basket. I have no idea how they got there because that basket has been emptied a couple of times since I started my search. One mystery was solved, but another was created.

Mostly though, we keep track of the important things. Only one set of car keys has been lost since we moved in together. No children have been lost. No wallets. No cell phones. No iPads. No remotes! I think we're doing pretty well for a large household with small children.