Friend on the floor

This is Audrey. She was Grace's best preschool friend who recently moved to Japan. And for one day, she lived on our bathroom floor.

Despite what her shirt says, Audrey isn't much of a talker.

You may find it strange that we allowed an imaginary person to lay around our bathroom all day. You may even say we were crazy for carefully sidestepping around a laid out pair of clothes to avoid messing them up. But as many know, parenthood can make you do some pretty weird stuff.

You also need to understand something about Audrey. Grace ADORED her. They were such good little friends. Grace talked about her all the time, but I only ever actually saw them together before school started. This is how it went most every morning before preschool:

Audrey: Hi Grace!! Do you like my new shoes??? They have Hello Kitty on them!
Grace: Yeah!! And do you like my shirt???? It's got sparkles on it!"
Audrey: Yeah it's pretty!!

Then they'd giggle about whatever else little girls giggle about until it was time to go into their classroom. I always pictured them going shopping together when they were in high school and comparing clothes just like they did back in preschool. But then Audrey moved to Japan so I'm pretty sure that dream is dead.

After Audrey's last day at school, it took Grace a week or so to fully realize that she wasn't coming back. And then there were a lot of questions about Japan, and a lot of "I miss my friend Audrey" comments. And then one day Audrey was lying in the middle of the bathroom floor.

This is the part where you see why Dustin and I took great care to not crumple up an outfit worn by an invisible child. When Grace showed it to me, I gave her props for her good imagination and then told her we needed to pick up the clothes and put them away. But then her eyes got all big and sad, and she begged and pleaded with me to not move her friend Audrey. Ever. Because she missed her and didn't want her to go. She begged until she almost cried.

So now seriously, who would pick up the clothes after that? Only someone who hates kittens and feeling joy, that's who. We figured that this was just her way of dealing with the loss of her friend and to just let it run its course, so the clothes stayed put. She never talked to Floor Audrey or anything. She just wanted her around. For the rest of the day, we made sure to step around the little outfit very carefully, so as not to mess it up. Because Grace the Perfectionist would notice if it moved even a little.

Let me tell you something. Brushing your teeth is no easy feat when you have to stand like a figure skater to reach the sink.

"Maybe if I can stretch just a little more, I can reach the toothpaste without breaking my face."

Sometime in the middle of the night, someone went into the bathroom half awake and messed Audrey up. In the morning no one knew who was to blame, but Grace wasn't real happy about it. She hobbled into our room with her hair sticking straight out, looked at us like we were scum and said, "Who messed up my friend Audrey?!?!...It's okay. I'll fix her."

But then she never did, and that was the end of Floor Audrey until a few days ago when she made another appearance.

This time, Grace only made half of her body before moving on to other things. I'll take this as progress.