April Fools!

At our house, pretty much every day is April Fools day. But occasionally we outdo outselves. I remember one year my daughter took it upon herself to turn the entire house into one big April Fool. She put salt in the sugar bowl, filled the teakettle with juice, put confetti in the cereal box, and had a serious talk with us about running away from home. All in one day. And we still didn't catch on.

Then there was the time -- and this didn't even happen in April -- where she was tidying up the house for us and when it came time to go somewhere we couldn't find the car keys. After searching and searching, she conveniently found them... in the sugar bowl. "I swear I don't remember doing it!"

And another time, we were trying to go out for dinner and couldn't find my husband's wallet. After searching the entire house, I gave up on the idea and popped a few frozen dinners onto the counter to microwave. I opened the microwave and voila! The wallet.

They all wanted to lay claim to the wallet fiasco, but no one wanted to take credit for the time Drew got lost at the outlet mall in Williamsburg. He must have been less than two years old at the time. We were in a bookstore, and the girls were supposed to be watching him. They did. "He went that way, Mama," they told me as I frantically swept the store.

Now, it's a surreal feeling to lose a child in a crowded place. First you panic. Then you panic some more. Then time stands still. I'm not kidding! As I began to run through the center of the mall, it felt like I was jogging in slow motion. But it soon turned into a race, complete with people on either side urging me on. "He went past me just a few minutes ago!" some stranger would say. Then, "He's down around the corner!" from someone else. I could feel the pressure building inside my head, the tension mounting in every sinew, every muscle fighting and flighting at the same time.

I turned the corner to go down to the end of the mall where we had first come in. And there he was. The tricky little dude had noticed a merry-go-round by the front entrance and walked out of the bookstore and back around two corners through massive crowds of people to get to it. A woman was watching him and glancing nervously behind her, scanning the crowd for any sign of adult supervision, probably also looking for a policeman to lock the crazy mom up.

Have you ever gone from serious to hysterical crying in a single second? That was how it was when I saw Drew sitting there, happily patting the merry-go-round elephant.

"I ride, Mama?" he said, those innocent, long-lashed eyes batting syrupy sweetness at me.

"Sure, baby. You ride!" I said, hugging him to my pounding heart.

So now it's April Fools Day again. I don't know what to expect from my four critters, but I know something's coming. I already found legos in the dog biscuit box, and a large picture of one of the Super Mario brothers in my cereal.

If that's as far as it goes, we're good.

: )

Yours, when everyone's insane but me and when no one's insane but me,

Megan Elizabeth