Just tell your brother you love him, dammit.

Sam and I seem to be having all sorts of adventures on our drives home this week. Today’s installment is less nerve-wracking and has a less happy ending than Monday’s, however.

I’m driving along, minding my own business, when Sam pipes up from the back.

“Mommy, why doesn’t Kate like me anymore?”

Annnnnnd cue my heart shattering into a million pieces.

Of course I’m immediately all “Kate loooooves you, honey! You’re her brother!” but he’s having none of it. “She always calls me Whiny Pants.” So being the genius I am, I decide we’re going to call Kate up at home right that moment and let her set the record straight.

Because there’s nothing like putting an 8 year old on the spot.

I’m certain she’ll rise to the occasion, though, so we call her. On speaker phone.

Did I mention I’m a genius?

“Kate, your brother has something to tell you,” I said. “I love you, Kay-Kate!” he yells.

*crickets*

I have no idea what to do at this point, so I don’t do anything. We sit in silence until Sam finally says “Don’t you have SOMETHING TO SAY BACK TO ME, KATE?”

“You want to ride on my back?” she says.

At this point I want to reach through the phone and ring her little neck.

The conversation went downhill from there, and Sam never got the confirmation he needed that his sister does, in fact, like him. Actually, I think I confirmed his belief that she does not.

Yay me!

The thing that kills me, though, is that she does like him, and sometimes they get along so beautifully. There’s nothing in the whole wide world I love more than to hear them laugh together. I just wish I could make that happen with more regularity.

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You’ve got a friend in me.

“Mommy, where’s my Baby?”

Those few words incited panic tonight as Sam and I were driving home from school. We had stopped at the grocery before heading home, and it was a madhouse – I work in a college town and why it didn’t occur to me that going to the store there on the first night the kids were back after winter break might not be a great plan is beyond me. In any case, I remembered Sam and me making the decision that he could bring Baby – his beloved teddy bear – into the store, but after the chaos that was shopping, that’s the last I could remember.

We were 20 minutes from there, and another 20 minutes from home, when Sam realized Baby was missing. I immediately pulled over and searched for him – stopping on the side of a two-lane highway in the dark was also a brilliant idea, I was full of them tonight – to no avail. I got back on the road and drove a little further until I came to a place where I could safely stop, and where I could turn around, if necessary.

It was necessary. Baby was nowhere to be found. I called Andy and told him we were headed back to Oxford on a Baby rescue mission. He wished me well and started praying to Saint… um…. whichever one is the patron saint of lost things.

I tried not to panic.

It sounds perfectly ridiculous, I know – a little teddy bear that is old and worn out and probably carrying at least three strains of the flu virus – but my heart was racing.

Sam kept saying things like “I don’t love any of my other stuffed animals the way I love Baby.” He asked me what we were going to do if we couldn’t find him.

When Sam started singing “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” I had to hold back tears.

We finally got back to the grocery store and pulled in the same parking spot we had been in before. Baby wasn’t there, so our next stop was the cart corral.

*cue the Hallelujah chorus*

There, laying on the ground beside the carts, was Baby, just as we’d left him. (No really. That’s what he looked like when Sam dropped him. He was already that dirty.)

Can’t you just see the relief and joy in Sam’s face?

I looked the same way, I’m sure. We were both so happy.

This was the closest call in three-plus years of close Baby-losing calls.

He’s is “just” a teddy bear, but Sam would have been so devastated to have lost him, and I would have been so devastated for Sam.

I just don’t want my baby to hurt.

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Gloomy.

This has been a rough week for me. And no, I don’t want to talk about it. I just feel like Charlie Brown and I want it to go away.

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