“Check under the bed.”

“Nope. Maybe it’s in the dryer.”

“I hope not.”

“It wasn’t there. Where else could it be?”

“I don’t even know. The yard?”

My wife was right. There, playing by our curbside mailbox, sat my toddler niece, proving how woefully unprepared we were to be parents.

Scott is an author and writer living in DFW, Texas, with his wife and their two boys. In his spare time he collects antique cameras. He has never intentionally misplaced a child, for the record.