Donut Thief

This is part 2 of the ‘Sleepwalking’ blog…

After a full night of dealing with sleepwalking children, I drag myself out of bed, a victim of sleep deprivation. Yes, a victim of being forced to converse with my sleepwalking daughter about beans…oh the torture! I go to the kitchen...

and that’s when I notice the box of unopened donuts sitting on the counter.

I SmiLe, gleaming. I am SO excited! I am already thinking of treating my miserable, sleep-deprived self to a donut. It will definitely cheer me up! (Why should I have cereal when the donut box is the ‘End Of The Rainbow’? It’s over there singing and struttin' its stuff, tempting me with its smooth, sleek, glazed frosting…Hmmmm…it’s a good thing it wasn’t the Pillsbury dough boy, I would have eaten him, too.)

My hands are shaking with excitement as I open the box. It’s rare to have donuts at our house- it’s like a Christmas present…except this Christmas present packs a hefty 20 grams of fat punch....the gift that keeps on giving…I glance at my hips for good measure. Instant cottage cheese spreads across them (and I can hear cows mooing in the far distance. Oh--and a cow bell. that one is reserved for me) at the delicious and wicked thought of the donut. Oh well!


I open the box--and stare.
There were 12 donuts in the box when I went to bed.............
There are now only 4….

WHAT??
An hour later the kids wake up and the interrogation begins.

The 8 year old gets eliminated easily. “Yuck!” she says, “I hate donuts!” True. Very true. She wouldn’t go near a donut….well, about as close as a can of black beans…

She’s off the hook while I investigate the other three detainees. The baby is a year old and was caged in his crib all night—he’s allowed to crawl away.
I stare at the two remaining suspects-- and the dog. I Stare down the pooch with a quizzical brow. If it had been the dog, she wouldn’t have been so clean about it - she would have pulled the box off the counter and eaten everything, including the box.

Dogs are not tidy. They don’t take one and leave the rest- the box would have been ripped up.

Yep, she’s off the hook too.

My husband was passed out on the bed all night, in between herding sleepwalking children back to their beds. He wouldn’t get up to eat (unless he was sleepwalking himself) but I ask anyway and he gives me a weird look. “Donuts? In the middle of the night?”
Alright, he’s off the black list.

That leaves the 3 year old and the 5 year old.

I stare down the younger of the two hostages and I ask her in a serious voice, “Did you eat any donuts last night?”
Her chubby, pinch-able cheeks puff up like an inflated balloon as she says excitedly, “DONUTS? WE have donuts?? I WANT ONE!”

Okay-- that was easy. Besides, the three-year-old can’t reach the counter, and there is not a chair pulled anywhere near it.
AH HA! That leaves only ONE midget-sized suspect left to investigate….

I turn to the five-year-old and transform into ‘C.S.I. Mama’. “Where were you last night, other than in my bedroom and walking the hall, waking up your father, running into your door, and looking for Chippy the Squirrel?” My face is void of expression as I demand, “Did you eat 8 donuts last night, sometime between 11pm and 6am?”

she gives me a puzzled look.(it was the look of ‘duh’) “No, silly mommy,” she said pointedly, rolling her eyes, “I was asleep.”
I copy her look and roll MY eyes. Yeah kiddo, asleep and walking…

I continue to grill her for more answers. “Do you remember eating a donut of any kind?” I check her hair for frosting and glaze-

she’s clean as a whistle.

I go to her bedroom to further my investigation. I check for sticky fingerprints, searching her bed to see if she has crumbs or smooshed chunks in it. Crime scenes can sometimes be…
messy…

Darn it. It’s clean.
Donut thieves have to be careful…especially when eating 8 and needing to hide the evidence from “the mama.” I drop--dramatically--to the floor and check the carpet, probing the ground with my hands, sniffing the air for lemony-glazed scents-- like a blood hound--a donut blood hound…


The second crime scene is turning up clean. I check her pillow, her sheets, the walls--even her blue, pigtailed magical unicorn. Everything!
I grab the 5 year old and pull her to me, taking her hands and checking her fingernails, searching the crevices intensely. Arg! Even her hands aren’t sticky! (I know...'arg'. What's up with that? It's just the first thing that came to my mind. Rest assure everyone, I did not turn into a pirate...although I would for Orlando Bloom and change my name to 'Elizabeth'...hee,hee....)

Determined to find the donut kidnapper, I enlist backup. My husband smells her breath for good measure (because I wasn’t going to do it)
Nothing.

There’s no sugary smell on her breath or any evidence that she has had a donut.
Darn! There is no one else to investigate. How odd!

Who ate 8 donuts between 11pm and 6am? I clearly remember putting the donuts carefully against the wall, far from the kid’s reach. I even counted them all before I walked down the hall to go to bed. There had been 12…and now there are 4…

It is a mystery. The only conclusion we can come up with is that during the night, our sleepwalking children must have eaten 8 donuts without realizing it. I just don’t know who. We may never know who actually did it, but 8 donuts? Wouldn’t any of them have woken with a sugar headache or be sick to their stomach? And yet, they were all ravenous when they woke up!

Now I’m tortured by curiosity because I want to know who ate them. It’s driving me nuts! DoNUTS!
It wasn’t me or my husband, and to tell you the truth, I know it wasn’t the dog-- and I believe my kids are telling the truth…

Creepy. I wonder if cookie monster’s cousin was loose in our neighborhood, Mr. Donut Monster. I’ve never seen him, but I’m beginning to believe he exists…

8 missing donuts, 3 sleepwalking children, 2 passed out parents, and NO suspects.
I guess it’s time to either get a surveillance camera or a new watch dog...