Where's my pants?!

Andrew lost his blue pyjama bottoms a few weeks ago, which is a real tragedy as pyjama bottoms have become a staple for his work uniform. He was down to red ones and green ones and really wanted his blue ones back. Alas, they were no where to be found. 

He did all the laundry in the house to see if they would turn up. They didn't.

He went through everyone's drawers to see if they were put away in the wrong place. They weren't.

He rifled through the "tickle trunk" full of dress-up clothes and and the give-away box full of off-casts. No pyjama bottoms were to be found in either location.

He held a family meeting. 

"If anyone has information on my missing pyjama bottoms, you can come forward now. There is no punishment for information. If you are hiding them as a joke, just tell me. I'm desperate. I just want my pants back."

His fixation on his missing pants reminded me a bit of Alexander, who lost his "sunshine-on-a-stick" from nursery (which he still has, even though he hasn't been to nursery in about a year) and made a "missing" poster to hang in the hallway. It said: Missing—my sunshine stick. If found, please tell me. 

Alexander with his sunshine stick and missing poster

Daddy was the one to find Alexander's sunshine-on-a-stick, wedged between the couch cushions.

So Daddy looked between the couch cushions. I had folded clothes on the couch recently, it wasn't impossible that an item of clothing had become trapped in the couch, but no pants were there either.

No one knew anything about the pants. 

Andrew had looked everywhere and the rest of us had done quite a lot of looking as well, but I decided to take one more look in Andrew's nightstand, which is from IKEA and has a couple of little cubby holes. And there I found his pyjama pants, neatly folded and placed on top of his spare slippers.

Andrew was flabbergasted when I told him where I'd found them—right there?! Beside his bed?! In a logical place that he swears he checked before?!

After thinking about it for a little while he remembered deciding to fold them up and place them there one day when he (uncharacteristically (for the pandemic)) had to put on actual pants. 

We all teased him mercilessly because "Where's my pants?!" has been an inside joke in our family for years. The joke predates the LEGO Movie in our house, stemming from an incident when Emily walked into the kitchen while Andrew and I were playing a game with his parents—but before Andrew and I were married—and wailed, "Where's my pants?!"

"You're...wearing...pants...." I pointed out.

"Not these pants!" she said. "These ones have a hole in them! I want my other pants! The ones that look just like these ones but without the hole!"

But the way she wailed, "Where's my pants?!" was just so funny that we started teasing her about it. So when we got married (2005—nine years before The LEGO Movie) she decorated a snowman for us that said, "Where's my pants?!" It's a very important ornament at our house. Stuff of legends, really. So it was very funny when Andrew had his own "Where's my pants?!" moment.

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Last night after scripture study, Andrew went to push in the book bins with his feet (because they were all pulled out, of course) and he found, to the side of the bin he went to push in...his slippers!

"My slippers!" he said, slipping his feet inside and sighing with joy.

"Wait a minute..." I said. "You mean all the time you've been double-socking it's because you couldn't find your slippers?!"

Andrew gave me his best sheepish face. 

We missed being absolutely pummeled by the latest polar vortex, but we did get some rather cold weather and our house really isn't insulated well (we found out...when we replaced our shower), and with wood floors throughout the main level, it could be a little chilly in the house. Andrew kept double-socking and I told him to just put on his slippers.

"That's too much insulation," he'd say. "Two pairs of socks is just about right. Slippers would be too much."

He had been wearing double socks the entire week and I kept suggesting slippers. I even said, "If you don't know where your slippers are, there are spare slippers by your bed."

But he didn't want his spare slippers; he wanted his new slippers (which raises the question of why we're even keeping them—because if you refuse to wear your back up slippers when you can't find your new slippers...you may as well not have them anymore). But he also didn't want to admit that he had misplaced his slippers after making such a big deal over his missing pants. So he just quietly suffered while wearing two pairs of socks.

Had he asked for help we probably would have found them in the first house-wide hunt because they were just right there in the middle of the music room!

So now instead of being teased because he lost his slippers...he's being teased because he found his slippers (and his poor back-up slippers might just make their way into the cast-off box because evidently they're not going to get worn again).