just some memories

I went to the car wash yesterday. Nora loves to "help" me with the vacuum and the compressed air thingy, so she was out of her seat bouncing around the car. I was finishing up and it was time to get her back in her seat. She was in the driver's seat and I told her to go get in her seat. I walked around the van to the passenger door, where I could buckle her in. But she wasn't there. I look back in the front and she's not there either.  "Nora!" I call out. No answer. I look around under the seats. Don't see her, so now I'm afraid she's hopped out the driver side and took off somewhere. So I'm looking around outside the car, just as a worker happens to be walking by. I am panicking at this point, as I tell him I can't find my 2 year old. He sprints off and pushes some emergency stop button that then causes alarms to start blaring. I'm yelling, in bewilderment at this point. Like, where could she have gone in the literal 30 seconds it took me to walk around the van? And then she pops her head up from under a blanket in the passenger side foot well area. With a huge smile on her face, thinking she was just hilarious. The whole incident was less than 5 minutes, but it kept me reeling all day.

Then we were driving to Eliza's preschool graduation and the weather has been abnormally cold lately. Eliza's comments on this:

"Mom, sometimes when I'm cold I wish I could be hot. But when I'm hot, I wish I was cold! Like, when I'm so hot I feel like a ball of dough, I just wish I could be a Popsicle. It's so hard to be the right temperature! Only one day was it the perfect weather. Just ONE DAY! ("What day is that?") TURKEY DAY! On Turkey Day it was the perfect weather. I wasn't too hot and I wasn't too cold. But it okay because Turkey Day will come again."  

She really is an absolute riot and I should write down more of what she says. She is insightful and hilarious. However on the way home she then said something heartbreaking. So during her performance she looked absolutely miserable up on the stage. I asked her why she looked so sad up there, expecting her to maybe say something about stage fright, but no. She says, "It's just that sometimes I feel like you're not really my mom. Like I don't even have a mom. And I just feel like I'm all alone." Uhm, WHAT! I have no idea how she could feel this way, but if you ever wanted to know exactly what to say to someone to make them feel the worst mom guilt imaginable - those are the words you need. I tried to get her to clarify but she was pretty clear. I see some more one on one time in our future.