She was here a second ago.

Sometimes with small children it's just easier to stay home. All your stuff is there. All their stuff is there. All those wonderful child raising inventions that weren't necessary even thirty years ago, but we're so dependent upon today are there. Of course the problem with staying home all the time, is well, staying home all the time, but also you get a bit lazy. Or at least I do. So what if the kids don't get out of their jammies until two in the afternoon. Who is that hurting? Plus it's hard to force them when I'm still in mine. And maybe dinner will be dry Cheerios eaten with a measuring spoon with a yogurt chaser? That's okay, right? Then there are things I can be lazy about that really come back to bite me in the ass later.

Friday night we had tickets to the ham supper at the church. As luck would have it we managed to score end of the table seats. Papa grabbed us a high chair for Maya and I plunked her in it and loaded the tray up with goldfish crackers and some dinner roll. Abby sat beside her sister and Mike on the other side of Abby. I sat across from Maya. Grandma Linda was working this dinner, but she did have some time to kill at the beginning of the meal which she did sitting talking to me. And I also sat talking to her. More importantly I sat facing her. Away from my daughter. And you may have noticed I never mentioned that I had buckled her into the highchair.

After you've been a Mom for a while and especially as your kids get older you can tell what they need by the tone and pitch of their cry. There's a "I'm stuck cry", "I'm tired cry", I'm hungry cry", "pick me up cry" and the granddaddy of them all, the "I'm hurt/scared cry". So as I sat looking and talking to Grandma Linda Maya started her "I'm hurt/scared cry". My head immediately whipped back around to the highchair which was empty. EMPTY. As in she was no longer sitting in it. As in I could not see her from where I was sitting. She was not where I had left her. I jumped out of my seat as Maya continued to cry and heads started to turn and Papa came racing up the other side of the hall. I made a quick scan of the area and found her standing underneath the tray of the high chair, holding onto the foot rest. When none of us, and by none of us I mean me, were looking she slid right out of the bottom of the highchair. Luckily she landed on her feet, but it was hard to say who's heart was pounding more, but I'd lay money on mine.

So why didn't I buckle her in? Well it all goes back to that lazy thing I mentioned earlier. You see even though our highchair at home has a fancy three point harness I never rarely use it. I am lulled into a false sense of security by Maya's disinterest in trying to escape from her high chair and also the molded plastic post that resides between her legs making a bottom slip out, at home, damn near impossible. When she does want to get out she will arch her body against the tray which is what I'm assuming she was doing Friday night. Just this time there was no plastic post to keep her from going anywhere. So yeah that Mom of the Year award, once again, I'm sure it's in the mail.