The curious case of the vanishing blanket

Look at how cute Norah is. She has her blanket wrapped around her neck, the blanket my mother made for her before she was even born. She loves that blanket, although we have been trying to wean her off of it. But we're not trying too hard. If Linus can have a blanket for fifty years, Norah can deal with it.

Last Thursday Krys came home from work. She went into Norah's bedroom to fix up her bed, and Norah grabbed the blanket. She carried it out to the laundry room, where Krys went next, and then brought it with her into the family room. I started making dinner (nothing better than Manwich!) while Krys hung out with Mia and Norah. The blanket lay on the floor for a bit. Then Krys got up and told Norah to pick up her shoes and blanket and take them into her bedroom. That was the last she saw of the blanket. After dinner Norah and I cleaned up. The blanket, I recall, was not on the floor. Later, Krys took Norah back to get her ready for bed. She couldn't find the blanket. Norah was a bit perturbed. She wasn't all that upset, but she did look around a bit confusedly. She managed to get to sleep, however, so that was good.

Krys went nuts looking for the blanket. I didn't go as nuts as she did, but we both looked everywhere we could. Krys looked in the laundry room, under furniture, in cabinets, everywhere. EVERYWHERE!!!!! She hadn't gone outside, but we looked there. She can't get into the garage, but we looked there too. Where had that confounded blanket gone? Krys was convinced that we either had a) a poltergeist; or b) some kind of vortex in the space-time continuum in the middle of our family room. Neither prospect sounded likely to me, but Krys claimed it was so!!!!

Friday came, and no blanket appeared. Norah had a good day, slept fine for her nap, and slept fine at night. We were still very puzzled about the absence of the blanket, but we couldn't think of any place we hadn't looked. On Saturday morning, Krys went to work. Yes, she went to work on a weekend. Boo! I was hanging out with the children, and at one point Mia needed to be changed. I took her into her bedroom to change her. I heard Norah playing with a rubber ball out in the kitchen/living room area - she loves bouncing balls on the tile and then chasing them down. Then the bouncing stopped. I took Mia back out and put her on the sofa, because we were going to go out for a bit. I looked over at Norah, who was sitting by the back door with her blanket wrapped around her neck. Yes, that picture above was right after she found the blanket. But where had she found it? Where had it been? Was our child trying to drive us INSANE?!?!?!? What was she doing to us?????

I called Krys and told her that Norah had the blanket back. As she freaked out because Norah was so creepy and possessed by Satan (how else could she have done it?), I noticed something:

We bought a tricycle for Norah a while back. She enjoys it. You'll notice that the seat tips up and there's a small space for storage beneath it. Norah was sitting right next to it. Mystery solved! We had forgotten about the space, and Norah closed the seat after she put the blanket into it. I don't know if she remembered where she put it or if she just happened to lift the seat up and think, "Hey! There's my blanket!"

So we're satisfied that we're not haunted and that the integrity of our house is not compromised by a black hole. Although I'm not sure Krys totally believes it's not. After all, I didn't actually see Norah take the blanket out of the tricycle, did I?????