Not-so-pleasant surprises

As any parent will tell you, one of the hazards of having children is finding food and/or drinks in various stages of decay in unexpected places.  Or at least that is my experience.  Unless you strap your child down any time they are eating or drinking, this is an unavoidable fact.  Let me set the scene.  I am gazing adoringly at my irresistibly cute offspring holding a snack cup full of cheerios.  I blink.  There stands my child, sans snack cup.  I search high and low, upending everything in my house that can be upended, emptying everything in my house that can be emptied, but no snack cup.  It will later appear under a pillow on the couch, half of its contents spilled and ground into the cushion, for good measure.

The most common places these various food/drink object disappear to in my household are: between couch cushions, under the couch, in the laundry hamper, in the recycle bin, and anywhere in each of the boys' rooms.  I won't even start about the car, that would take too long, but it gives me comfort that if I should ever run out of gas on a lonely stretch of highway, there are a good two or three meals that can be scavenged from numerous crevices that would tide me over until help arrives.

Actually, I consider myself thankful that the worst I've ever come across was a week-old sippy cup of milk under the couch.  I am thankful because this sippy cup was leak proof, and although I debated whether to wash it (and thus be forced to actually open it), or just throw it in the garbage, at least I didn't have to clean the carpet.  Today, however, I feared I wouldn't be as lucky.  Matej has recently insisted the only way he will eat a banana is if I peel it and give it to him whole so he can feed himself, which is what I did this morning.  I was clearing off the breakfast table, and he was hovering around me, happily munching on his banana, until I turned my back to load the dishwasher.  I finished literally seconds later, only to see him exiting his room, banana nowhere to be seen.  I searched high and low, and for once I actually hoped one of the dogs had eaten it.  The longer I searched, the more frantic I became, images of the moldy slime the banana would undoubtedly soon become burned into my brain.  However, it seemed to have disappeared without a trace.  Because I have the attention span of a fruit fly, I didn't give it a second thought until bath time.  Jakub was in time out (perhaps I will elaborate on this in a future post), and said suddenly, "Mommy!  A banana!"  Now, those of you familiar with the imagination of a preschooler will forgive me for absentmindedly saying "Hmm, how interesting," as I went about getting Matej into his pyjamas.  However, somewhere deep inside my brain, where some of the synapses are still functioning, I made the connection. 

Disaster averted.  No moldy slime.  This time, anyway.