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Always Watching

A few weeks back, Mom-person lost her wedding ring.  I was walking across the room one morning, and noticed her engagement ring laying on the rug, but the wedding ring was nowhere in sight.  She and I started a search for the errant ring.  We looked under the rug, then under the bed.  I emptied out the recycling bag, (Ick!), since we’d been cleaning house the night before.  We looked in all the places the ring should be.  It wasn’t in any of them.  Finally, we asked five year-old No. 2 if he happened to know where the ring was.  He’s frequently the moving force behind ‘misplaced’ items.  He earnestly told us he had no idea.

Having assured ourselves that we weren’t shipping the ring to the recycling plant, we got on with life figuring the ring would turn up, and that we’d remount a more extensive search later.  Life, as it does around here, proceeded to trod rapidly along.  Before we knew it, a week passed before we’d even thought to look for the ring again.

Then, one morning, from out of nowhere, three year-old No. 3 walked up to Mom-person, and said “You haven’t found your ring yet.”

“Nope.” Mom person replied.

“It’s under the dresser.  Yeah.” No. 3 appends most statements of fact with “Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it fell down, and rolled, and went under the dresser.  Yeah.”

And there you have it, all we need have done is asked!

A few days later Mom-person got time to look under the dresser, and there the ring was, exactly where 3 said it would be!

I love it that the kids are always taking in far more than I think they were at the time!  All of them do this.  Weeks after a class or lecture that I think they merely sat through politely, they’ll quote some piece of information they picked up there.  Often, when we get back from an outing, I’ll ask them what their favorite part was.  Most of the time I get back a blanket statement, “All of it!”  Then, out of the blue, weeks later, one of them will recount a part of the outing to me as a story.  They absorbed everything!  They just wanted to recount the information when it made sense to them.  Kinda just like the rest of us!

What’s your favorite story of your kids being ahead of the game, (or maybe even the only ones in the game)?


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