Contraband

A few months ago, Gerardo lost his keys and we searched and searched and searched for them, high and low, hither and thither, to no avail. We asked Ruby several times if she had them, and she insisted she didn't. Certain they had been lost on the street, but hoping for a miracle, I asked her one last time if she had taken Daddy's keys.

"I didn't take them! I just put them!"

"Put them where?"

"In my boot!"

And sure enough, there they were in her red rain boot, the one exact place we hadn't looked. "Why didn't you tell us this earlier?" I asked. She shrugged. "I just forgot." Right. The kid remembers the hummingbird we saw in the garden two years ago, but "forgot" that she put Daddy's keys in her boot a few hours ago.

Living with Ruby is like having a pet magpie. Every time we lose something, we're pretty sure it'll turn up eventually in one of her purses, backpacks, boxes or bags. Periodically, I go through her stuff to weed out the garbage and rocks and wine corks and lids and other minutia she likes to squirrel away. Inevitably, I find little artifacts from around the house secreted away in zipper compartments or tucked into the bottom of her stuffed animal basket, things that caught her eye or captured her imagination. It's kind of fun to see what she found interesting (or forbidden) enough to claim as her own. Recurring finds include the digital thermometer and every bottle of nail polish we own.

Yesterday, after happening upon a cup of water filled with doll accessories that she had hidden behind the books on her shelf, I decided it was time to sort through her stuff again.

Here's what I found:

I don't let her play with CDs because a) they're expensive and b) I never know what's on them. I guess a whole stack of them was too shiny to resist.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for my Altoids. I found the empty tin in the cigar box where she keeps her crayons and markers and assumed she had eaten them all. Nope! They were in this glasses case - the one I couldn't find when I needed it last week. I had to put my glasses in an old sock instead.

She had to forage through a box full of pins and needles for this little jewel, which has fascinated her since she was a tiny little thing.

Last week I accepted an offer from my mom for a pair of her old reading glasses because I couldn't seem to find any of mine, which are typically strategically placed throughout the house. She probably found the top pair on my night stand, and the pair on the bottom was most likely in my purse.

Where is she finding all of this change? She collects it religiously, and these were scattered across her landscape, pooled at the bottoms of her purses and sorted into various boxes, tins and baskets.

We bought a coconut back in March, and although she didn't like the milk or the meat, she apparently thought the shell was pretty cool. I don't know at what point she dug this out of the trash, but she had it in with her hats - a hard, hairy yarmulke.

Gerardo and I are notebook junkies, filling pages and pages with song lyrics, grocery lists and notes to self. Ruby has a large quantity of her own notebooks, but as usual, she prefers the adult versions. Her little drawings and shaky letters of the alphabet are scrawled across random pages. 

The red spatula was in a backpack filled with chalk and Mardi Gras beads. The pig puppet in her doll crib was snugly tucked in with the napkin.

She was probably looking for pee pees and vajayjays. Sorry to disappoint you, kid!

We pulled these out during a storm because they're the only candles we have, and Ruby fell in love. I found them in her girly-girl pink straw purse with the ginormous fabric gerbera daisy on it.

"Where the hell is my phone charger?"

Text to my mom from May 6, regarding my birthday list: "...and a multipack of good quality pens, black ink, medium tip, with some kind of electromagnetic charge to keep them on my desk and give Ruby an electrical shock when she touches them."

Would you like one jigger, or two? (It's a good thing we don't actually measure our shots of booze.)

The child can't keep her sticky little fingers out of my jewelry box, especially now that she has her own jewelry box to keep things in. Never mind that she has a barrel's worth of oil invested in her very own large collection of plastic rings. To her credit, these were very neatly arranged alongside the sea glass from my ancient rock collection, which I will let her keep. 

I need to start putting my makeup in the top cupboard with the poisons. But who are we kidding? If Ruby wanted to eat poison, she'd just climb on top of the washing machine and get it. The mascara wand was missing until I found it in her underwear drawer, so now the contents of the tube are all dried and clumpy. I'm pretty sure I'm going to stumble upon mascara smears and eyeliner graffiti somewhere in the house any day now. (The Burt's Bees explains where she's been finding the greasy blush that she smears on her cheeks from ear to ear.)

Bonus:

Last week I came upon this installation on the landing. My red embroidery thread (from the same pin & needle box where she found the measuring tape) is tied to a nail, threaded through Mila's eyelash curler, wrapped around the wooden hook thingie and secured to the windowsill hardware. The blue scarf is a nice touch, don't you think?