Yesternight.

Yesternight is a beautiful word that rolled right out of Eva's mouth last night at bedtime when she was relating a story about the previous night. When she said it, I looked over at Tony who also heard it and I just closed my eyes and savored the sound of her four year old voice saying it. It was like she had said it a hundred times before, so matter-of-factly as if it were already part of all of our vocabulary. Well, I can assure you, it is now.

Eva was child of the week at her school and this is the board I made for her last year when she held the honor. My printer has been out of color ink for a while and I actually forgot that I could send photos out for printing so I didn't update her board from what it looked like last year. I liked it, I thought it turned out sweet.

It has hung in her room since April or May and we took it in again this past week. She had been expressing herself to me for several days that she intended to "share" her Snow White Bear with her classmates. So Monday morning we took it in to school and she shared her bear which by the way was a gift last Christmas from her Nana [my mother.]

So, last night when it was bedtime, and after we discussed the events of yesternight, she realized that we had left Snow White Bear at school. She was already tucked into bed with her bunny blanket [her most prized possession, used by baby Em, baby Sarah, and baby Wyatt before her] snugly around herself and her face became distorted and she cried such a painfully sweet cry. It completely tore me up. It was such an honest and transparent sadness that she experienced and it sat right there on top of her face. This is a kid who hardly ever gets upset, she can somehow make the best of any situation. She doesn't wail, she doesn't fuss much. And if she whines about something, I tell her that she is whining, and she repeats herself for me in the most calm and intentional way. She is a star.

Anyway. The first thing that popped into my head was Corduroy. So I reasoned with her that her bear was having a wonderful adventure like Corduroy in the department store. I also assured her that we would stop by and pick her bear up first thing in the morning and make sure she was alright. It worked. She smiled and laughed through the tears that were already there and turned over away from me and snuggled deep. But, even then I could see her fighting off the distress. Lights out, not another word heard.

We dropped off all the big kids at 8:30 and went straight to her school. She skipped up the sidewalk and happily proclaimed to me that her bear had such a great adventure in the night. We went in and looked in the cubbies and it wasn't anywhere. I started to panic a little and went over to her teachers and inquired. I was so relieved to hear that they had put it away in the adult storage area [aka: adult bathroom] on top of a stack of bins. As Eva bounced off to look for it, I told them the story of how I calmed her down at bedtime with a parallel of her bear and Corduroy.

Eva's teacher Julie's face lit up like a light. She told me to look in the bathroom and show Eva who her bear was sitting next to on that stack of bins. Well hold on to your socks people, it was Corduroy! Freakin' Corduroy the bear from the book! Eva was so beyond thrilled! I don't know if I have ever seen her with a bigger smile. It felt like a happy little miracle, I am not kidding.

I was the happiest momma in the world for a moment, I truly was. All the mysteries of the universe suddenly made sense to me. And then I receded to being just me, a very happy momma but probably not the happiest on the entire terrestrial ball.

So of course the first thing I did after arriving home was search out our copy of Corduroy and pose it with the sweet bear. The two adventurers reunited again!