This morning when I wanted to go shopping I couldn’t find my cellphone. I knew that the little one had been playing with it earlier, acting as if one of her grandmothers was on the phone, but unfortunately I didn’t see where she put it once her phone call was finished. While I am known for not answering the phone because I normally let it lie around somewhere on silent mode (I do have an aversion regarding people checking their cellphone too often…), I am somehow dependent on it as we don’t have a landline.

The fact that the little one loves to play with our cellphones still creates ambivalent feelings. A couple of years ago my sister announced that she had a new cellphone because my niece had been playing with the old one and hid it somewhere untraceable. My first thought at that time was “well, just don’t let your toddler play with valuable things“. My first thoughts now are “well, she will grow up with technology anyway, so why not teach her to be attentive with it” followed by “there is almost no space left in the flat that she can’t reach anyway and that space (on the top shelves) is already occupied by other stuff“.

Searching for my cellphone almost resembled the work of a special police unit clearing a flat. A tidy and meticulous action is required in such a case! And it brilliantly showed how life will change with a toddler.

Two years ago, I would have searched following spots for my cellphone:

– my bag

– my other bag

– my desk

– the table

– the pockets of my jacket

Today, I skipped searching there and went right to the obvious places:

– the garbage bin

– the toilet

– the box with Karsten’s bike equipment

– the drawer in the bathroom (I only checked there because I saw her putting my cellphone inside that drawer a few days earlier and I thought that this is a place where I definitely wouldn’t expect it to be!)

– under the bed (socks, earplugs, toy blocks, tissues and a toy car found instead)

– inside the shoes (you laugh, but that’s where my sister found her cellphone half a year later…inside one of the winter boots)

– the drawer with the baking pots

– between my underwear

plus, I checked the grass below our balcony…

In the end, I found it in her cuddly corner. A sheep called Olli was sitting on it.