Naughty and Nice

This is Ava.

She's spent many an afternoon in the backyard working on her mural.  She reads and reads and she loves to make her brothers laugh.

She's on the Nice List.

This is Dan.  

He obliges when I ask him to stand certain places so I can test the light for pictures.  He even strikes poses for me.  

Even though the baby growing months always bring more tension than we're used to, he's a real gem.  Definitely, Nice.

This is Luke.

He melts my heart by saying things like:

 "Mom, when I see people cry it makes my eyes try to water.  When I see people cry, my eyes want to water because it makes my heart so sad."

And

"Mom, I like everything you say."

 To the world he doesn't show too much, but here at home, he is a bundle of love. And he's right at the top of the Nice List.

Then there's Max.   

 He says some cute things, too.  Like every time we're in a parking lot as we're holding hands, he pulls out the same, "We don't want any cars to squish me."


"No we don't!" I always agree.


Of course, his referring to me as his baby all the time, doesn't hurt either.

But more and more lately, he glares at people in the store who try to talk to him, he pulls serious attitude with Dan and me, and the other kids; everyone for that matter.  And he generally looks for things to disrupt and bother.

Yesterday evening, we had just returned home and I sat down at the computer with my mom's Costco card in my hand. I set it on the desk next to me. I don't have a membership and I always mooch off of hers when I need to order pictures.  As I was about to begin my business, Dan requested to use the computer for a minute.

In the three minutes it took him to look at what he wanted and my booty returned to the chair, that Costco card had disappeared. Gone missing. Vanished!

I began the search.  On the floor all around the computer.  In the drawers of the desk.  On the counters in the kitchen.  About the time by blood was warming up, I questioned the kids.

"Have any of seen a card?  It was on the desk?  Did any of you touch it?"

No, was the consensus on their blank faces.

I even went to my purse to pull out a similar card so they'd be sure to know what I was talking about, or maybe jog a memory.

Again, nobody had seen or touched the card.

I resumed the search and began to get mad.  How could something just disappear?  And it wasn't even mine?  Ava lost her shoe this past week too.  The shoe she wears every single day.  I might be giving the impression that we have so much stuff around here that things just get lost all the time.  But while my house rarely sparkles, we tidy things up most nights, so everything finds its way home before bedtime.  The fact that an entire sneaker, bought less than 3 months ago, was MIA was quite frustrating.  And now adding the card to the very mysterious list was too much.

I spread the search to every other room on the first floor--the bathroom, the toy room, the living room, dining room.  No stupid card.

I yelled at Dan to come downstairs. By this time, I was convinced that in his absent-minded-professor ways he had picked up the card and put it in the trash or the fridge or the microwave (stranger things have happened).

But he swore up and down just like the kids, that he hadn't touched it, though he did remember seeing it right there by the computer.

I don't know where I was when Dan came up with the brilliant idea that perhaps the smallest set of hands in our house had shoved the card through the infamous wall vent. (You remember the puzzle we found in the vent a few weeks ago?)

I am convinced that information was sent to Dan via divine intervention by a God who saw that three children were about to be traumatized by their mother's imminent visit to CrazyTown.

I got out the wrench and began to work on the stripped out screws in a fury.  And sure enough, as I pried the grate away from the wall, there was the Costco card.

"Max, did you put the card in the vent?"

"Yes. Yes, I did."

Naughty List for sure.