Since we've been home from our trip, I've been having a really hard time finding socks for Kate. It seems like almost every time I am getting her dressed, I can only find one of any given pair of socks she owns, and some pairs just seem to have disappeared completely. For a while, I kept waiting for them to turn up in the laundry, but we've been home for a while now, and while I am not exactly the Donna Reed of the Southwest, I have managed to do all the laundry from the trip now that it's been three weeks since we came home. It's been a mystery, but not a glamorous mystery, just a vaguely irritating one.

In what I thought was a completely unrelated phenomenon, when I've gone to get Kate up from her afternoon nap lately, I've found her sockless in her crib. I hadn't really thought about how many times this had happened, because who has time to think about that kind of stuff what with all the laundry piling up? And then last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, it suddenly came to me where all those socks were. Predictably, I went to sleep and forgot all about it, but this afternoon when I went in to get Kate up from her nap and found her barefoot, I remembered my theory and looked between her crib and the wall. Sure enough, there were all the socks. By which I mean about a dozen socks, some in complete pairs, some loners, but still rendering the pair of socks to which they belonged unwearable in their absence. No wonder I can't find a pair of socks to put on the kid! She's been squirreling them all away!

What cracks me up about this is that in order to get all those socks down there, Kate has to have been waiting until I leave the room, thinking she's drifting off to sleep, and then taking off her socks and standing up in her crib to drop them down the chute. I don't know what ever gave her the idea to do that, but she's been very quiet about the whole thing, and very efficient too. So this afternoon I pat myself on the back. Maybe I am no Donna Reed, but I bet I could give Nancy Drew a run for her money. Thus is solved the Mystery of the Missing Socks. Here is the cute little culprit with some of her stash.