ummmm...14 days later...

Day 1:
Where to start...is it a morning at the preschool when a tiny dish of tiny silver beads spills not once, but twice in a matter of minutes? Destined to serve as a strategically planted distraction by the charming little child who would then coat himself in paint while my hands were filled with tiny hazards?

Day 2:
Or is it trying to do laundry without having to re-wash or re-dry the same loads?

Day 3:
Or is it trashing our house by hosting a play date with multiple friends to appease our depraved children on the day before we have company arriving?

Day 4:
Perhaps it's finding out that the IRS wants our kidneys?

Day 5:
Or that in order to keep driving our car we need to put $$$$ in to it?

Day 6:
Or is it picking up a child from school only to learn that a friend that we just had over whacked him in the face to be funny?

Day 7:
Maybe it's the daughter who whines and pulls and whimpers for us to get in the car as soon as possible so she can immediately start the homework that she would like me to do?

Day 8:
Could it be the epically stoic meltdown of rebellion when asked to please set the table?

"Please set the table, it's your turn tonight."
"Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrgrggggg!"
"I already put the place mats out and the silverware is in a pile on the table. I just need you to put the silverware in the right place with the napkins."
A few clink, clanks, pinks, and plops were heard. And I re-entered the dining room. My "helper" was gone and the silverware was placed in a way that Picasso might have envied.
"Can you please come back in here?" I called out.
She returned like a battered, mute prisoner.
"I will show you where the silverware should go on this mat and then you can do the rest."
She gave me her best Ally Sheedy Breakfast Club glance through her bangs, and I returned to the dinner I was burning.
We ran through this cycle twice more...and then had dinner.

Day 9:
Or the eery declaration by our 5 yr old that "dying is sad, but burying people is fun."

Day 10:
Per chance it was the tooth fairy whom arrived on time, left money despite the fact that the child left teeth on the dresser instead of under the pillow and still left the child disappointed. "I wanted Daddy to see the tooth! Can the 'tooth fairy' " he said gesturing with finger quotes around the title, "still show him?"
"Yes," I said discovered and defeated though still willing to throw in a third person reference, "I'm sure she can."

Day 11:
Or the time sensitive tantrum that occurred minutes before we had to be somewhere else, involving the immediate need to remove a "meow" from her Build-A-Bear Kitty. "I want to make her meows myself!" she pleaded through tears.

Day 12:
Maybe it was the moment in which while I was making dinner, our eldest child started singing his multiplication homework, to the tune of "Gangham Style" which he put on loudly in the background, while our daughter pulled at my arm and pleaded for him to turn it down as she needed to focus on learning how to tell time on her homework, as our 5 yr old started break dancing with the dog, on the floor, in the middle of it all.

Day 13:
Or could it be the endless coughing virus that has plagued the state of Colorado?

Day 14:
Or the swift removal of said "meow box" at the mall 3 days later and then promptly losing our 5 yr old.  Perhaps that is where to start....

I would like to thank the mall security at Chapel Hills Mall.  You gentlemen do a fine job and I feel better knowing you are there. I will do my best to keep my son chained to my body from now on as he terrified me greatly by disappearing into thin air at the exact same time a single man sitting at the mall also disappeared. Yes, I am profiling. He was white, single, and at the mall. It was scary. I had, for the first time ever, that feeling that our life as we knew it was over and we were going to become a tragic CBS special or a Dateline topic. I wanted to vomit. And as I ran over to the woman at the smoothie kiosk, who promptly called security, I feared that she would not be able to help me.

She quickly got on her cell phone and calmly explained the situation. She then pulled the phone away from her face and asked, "Is he wearing a black hoodie, with a nike swoosh?"
"YES!!!!!!!" I could not believe it. It was the lotto. We won.
"They're bringing him down now."
"Down?' I thought to myself. "Jesus, how far did he get?"

I wanted to drag him out of that mall by his ear, but it was clear he had gotten pretty scared on his own. Although the sucker and stickers that security gave him didn't hurt.
As we walked through the mall to get back to our car, he proudly wore not one, but two mall security sticker badges, displaying to all the impression that his mother had lost him not once, but twice.