Last Thursday I dropped my family off at home and went to pick up a prescription. I was gone about ten minutes and when I walked back in my door, my children were all sitting on the couch, watching TV. Monkeyboy was shoeless, and one of his shoes was sitting on the floor as if it had been casually kicked off. I looked, but never found the other one. For days, I looked under furniture, behind things, through my car, etc. The shoe was nowhere to be found. Three times I asked the other kids if they had any idea where the shoe could be. They didn’t, and I believed this because I couldn’t see how one shoe would be right next to him in the living room and the other in another room. Silly mommy.

I refused to go buy another pair as these were almost-brand-new shoes. I mean, the shoe had to be somewhere, right? Everyday I sent him to school in his red crocs that look like Lightening McQueen and that make him fall down when he runs, feeling increasingly guilty.

Finally, toward the end of the week, I broke down and bought Monkeyboy a brand new pair of shoes. (He calls them his “AMAZING Spiderman” shoes and they’re very cute, but that is beside the point.) We stopped at the store on the way home from work and day care and got the shoes. Almost as soon as we walked in the door at home, Princess walked up and said, “Hey, I know where Monkeyboy’s other shoe is.” Apparently, it was in her room. She took it in there to kill a spider.