Goblins and Guardians

There is a goblin following me around, I'm absolutely sure of it. He likes to take things I will need and move them. As far as I can tell he doesn't just hide them, he moves them to another dimension. How else can the loss of the memory card for our camera be explained?? Friday I used the last of the juice in my camera batteries to get a few shots of Willie on his birthday. Then I sat down at the computer, plugged the memory card into the flash drive, and waited for the download window to pop up. My intention was to blog about my baby and this big milestone. Well, I was surfing the net while waiting (sometimes my computer is incredibly slow) Willie was crawling around, Polly was around, all the kids were in the living room and went nowhere at all. I looked back down at the computer to see if the card was in right, because it still hadn't started to load. It was GONE. Poof, vanished. As I said nobody had gone anywhere, but Willie had been down there, so we started to search the living room. Nope it's gone. LONG gone. Not a trace. It is possible that the dog ate it, but I don't think she could just swallow it whole and there are no pieces to be found, neither have I found any evidence of it passing. So we have a goblin, definitely a goblin. He has also taken the battery charger for the camera (last of the juice used up remember?), and Harvey's floaty vest. Which brings us to the guardian.

Last night we had a swim party with Jeff's company. I had kept the kids floaty suits on top of the laundry sorter, and went to get them into the bag. Abby's was there, Harvey's was not. We spent 20 minutes looking in all the places we could think of for that floaty vest. When Harvey is wearing that suit and in a floaty ring, he has a lot of fun just leaping into the water and playing. I felt horrible when we couldn't find it for him. But off we went, nothing to be done. Later Jeff was helping Abby in the restroom, and I was watching Willie on the deck. Harvey was wearing his water wings in the pool. The pool we were at has a large ledge that creates a kiddie depth at one end, with a drop off into water 3-4 feet deep. There were quite a few people in the water, including adults, and some giant inner tubes. Earlier this summer I had read an article about pool dangers. It pointed out that small children do not splash or yell, and most accidents happen when a parent assumes that one of the other adults close enough is keeping watch. When you are swimming with 3 small children and 2 adults there is the chance that one will be unsupervised for a while. I remembered the article at that moment, and looked up to see the inner tubes crowding Harvey on the ledge some bigger kids were pushing them around, and it looked like he might just get pushed off the edge. Yep, pretty sure he's off the edge. I stand up and drop my stuff, to go ask someone to push him back. His water wings were holding him up OK, but he was floundering, then just as I got to the edge of the pool, down his head goes. There was an adult 2 feet away from him, but no, they weren't looking. I jumped right, in grabbed him up, and held him tight. He was sputtering and scared, but otherwise fine. We got out and dried off, he ate a few chips, then got back in when Daddy was back. I am so very grateful for the guardian that whispered into my head that article. I don't know how bad it would have been if not, but everything is fine now so it doesn't matter really. The goblin can take my stuff. I can replace it. I'd really like to find the card so I can have those pictures, but I have what matters- my kids.