Have you seen Cody?

Reward if found...

So, last night we did the inevitable and made the kids start going to bed earlier than normal. I figure they better start getting use to this before school starts... tomorrow. One night is enough, right? 9:00, the girls are all ready to go to bed when Ishee discovers that she can't find Cody. Cody is her stuffed panda Webkinz that she got for Easter. She decided to name it Cody after my friend Heidi's baby Coby, only Coby is a girl and her panda, she decided, was a boy, and Cody was almost the same name, and one of her favorite dudes happens to be named Cody, so it was all good. She's clever like that.

We tore the house apart. Literally. It looks like a bomb went off in here. Cody is nowhere to be found. In the process of the shredding, we did find the flashlights so we could go outside and hunt around the yard. We do this (hunt for Cody outside after dark) on a regular basis and the girls have a habit of not returning the flashlights to their home. Amazing what you find in the toybox. Cody was still nowhere to be found.

10:30 we gave up and sent the Ish to bed with tears streaming down her cheeks. She's such a... what is the word? When she was a baby, it was a blanket. She named the blanket Goo. It went everywhere she went. I mean, everywhere. Including the bathtub. She chewed on it constantly. For Christmas, she got a Webkinz bunny she appropriately named Bunny. She chewed the ears off. Literally. At least she gave up on Goo. We don't even know where Goo is anymore. She got tired of her grandpa making comments about her earless bunny, got tired of sitting in front of the washer crying as the dirty "supposed to be white" bunny got a bath, afraid the washer would ruin her due to the holes in her ears, so Bunny got the boot as the official "drag along" and she moved on to the panda bear. Now Cody has up and pissadeared. She is distraught. Her life is over. She can't go on. She's still crying. What am I doing to help? Blogging.

In the process of the shredding of the house, the husband and I informed the girls it was time to dejunk and I was going to have a good time doing it while they were gone to school so they couldn't argue about every little thing I decide to toss, which even after I toss 90% of it, we'll still have too much junk. Let the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth begin. The girls are now in their room sorting through things they want to keep and things they don't care about. Supposedly. With any luck, Cody will magically appear. Otherwise it could be a long night. At least they were up early... 7:00 a.m. looking for the dumb thing (beats their normal 10:30 awakening by a few hours). I should hide it again tonight so they will get up for school that early tomorrow looking for it again. Thankfully, this year they are starting school a half hour later and the bus is now coming at 7:53 instead of 7:23. This means "I" get to sleep in, too! Yabahooey!

In the meantime... my sister is a Savior. She invited me to go have a pedicure with her today. My first one ever! One last hurrah for her before she has to return to work at the school tomorrow. She must have known Cody would go missing and I'd be pulling my hair out today and need a few hours away to keep my sanity. This way, the kids can stay home and beat the snot out of each other in peace while they hunt for the missing panda bear and all prized posessions on their bedroom floor. Besides, the boy has more patience than I do when it comes to dealing with her continual outbursts. Let him deal with it! Am I not the best mom ever? Or the worst? Or something?

I just need to remember to tell the boy he is allowed to call me only if there is massive amounts of blood involved and for no other reason, which the way things or going, will be way before I ever leave, and hide the phone from Ishee or they will call every two seconds to tell me "she isn't helping" and "she won't clean up any of my stuff, too" and "I still can't find Cody anywhere". The middle child only calls for major things like "I just stepped on your laptop and it's ruined." Oh wait, that was last week. Maybe I won't even take my cell phone!

Oh! Reminds me, I did that last night on accident... went off without my cell phone which was no big deal because I was only running the middle child up to the church for mutual. Except, Ishee decided last second she was coming with me and her dad didn't know and for the first time ever he decided to check on her whereabouts and discovered her missing and couldn't call me to ask if she was with me so he had a slight heart attack.

I will return... eventually... maybe... I have to... it's meet and greet the teacher with your school supplies day. Besides, I kind of like the boy, not to mention, torture is against the Geneva convention.