Inside the mind of a three-year-old

Recently, two items in our home went missing.

The first was the right shoe to one of Peanut’s favorite pairs. Actually, her very favorite pair. This caused much whining and moaning on her part, which was quite unpleasant.

The other was a brand-spanking-new toothbrush. Fresh from Tarjay, the toothbrush was bright orange and featured Eve from Wall-E. Despite me telling my little heathens cherubs not to open the package, they did. I found the packaging carelessly tossed on the dining room floor. The toothbrush was nowhere to be found.

For two days, I looked high and low for both items searching all the logical places: under couches and beds, on shelves, in the big basket of Barbies and Barbie clothes, in the dress-up box, and on the seats of all the dining room chairs. I conducted a thorough search of each bedroom, both bathrooms, the dining room, the kitchen, the living room, the porch and even the basement. I scanned all the built-in bookshelves in the living room, the end tables spread around the house and the bottom of all the closets. I looked on window sills and even inside wastebaskets.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Both items appeared to have been sucked into a vortex along with half the Polly Pocket princess dolls my daughters’ got for Christmas, a handful of books, too many socks to count, the remote control to the DVD player, one of my weight-lifting gloves (calluses are so damn unladylike), dozens of tubes of Blistex and my round brush that’s been missing since March. (Where the hell is that thing?!)

Then, earlier today I stumbled upon both items in two unrelated, random finds. Instantly, I realized the err of my ways. To repeat what I stated above: “I looked high and low for both items searching all the logical places.

Do you see what I’m getting at? Where I went wrong? No?

The key word here is “logical.”

Because when you are looking for something that has been hidden away by a naughty clever three-year-old girl, you must abandon all logic.

Shoe on the bottom shelf of the pantry



Toothbrush in the dollhouse shower



When I asked Loaf about this, her answers were very straightforward. The shoe was hungry. And the tootbrush? Well, Eve was dirty. She needed a shower.

Perfectly logical after all.