Dude, where's my Karma?

Mojo loves stickers, especially those given to her as a reward for working hard or being brave. She displays them proudly right up until the point when her compulsion to chew and bite things takes over and we have to retrieve them from her mouth. We came up with a few ways to save the stickers from a chewy fate, we put her stickers in our diary and then Daddy came up with the brilliant plan of sticking them to her car seat. The side of her car seat was covered in animal stickers, 'well done', 'good work', 'excellent' stickers. They made her (and I) smile every time we opened the car door.

So when I saw the state of Mojo's car seat which had been attacked with a crowbar by whoever it was who stole our car from outside the house last Sunday, I found myself wondering if while wielding the crowbar he even noticed the stickers let alone understood their importance or the amount of effort and achievement they represented.

What we got back of our car!

When the Police knocked on the door at 5am on Monday morning to ask us if we were the owners of our car it took a while to process what was happening. They told us that the car had been stolen, they suspected using an electronic device that can be bought online which overrides the key fob and enables cars to be stolen as easily as having the key!! Good to know, right? The Police had stopped and then chased the car which had run into a bollard and the thieves escaped.

Of course I was shocked and angry but in my head they wouldn't have been able to steal anything from the car, given that they escaped on foot, and the Police said the damage looked minimal so I was pragmatic. I was hugely relieved that we had removed the wheelchair which usually stays in the car overnight. I could imagine the headline in the Wandsworth Guardian 'Theives steal disabled child's wheelchair'.

As the week has gone on more information has emerged and when we saw the car the damage was significantly more extensive than we had been led to believe. Baby's car seat has been stolen completely and Mojo's was ripped, crowbarred and trashed. Gone completely were the coats, girls toys and most upsettingly of all Mojos favourite chewing toy. It's one we've cultivated for years adding all her favourite comforters to one specially imported chewable necklace, it was brilliant. I wonder what they did with it, where they dumped it? Oh and, aside from that, they have written off our car!

I veered from pragmatic to furious to pragmatic again.

The redeeming feature of our week has been Mojo's health which has been on a seasonally unusual high. She's super cheerful and doesn't appear to care that we are travelling in taxis and has instead just embraced the fact that Granny has moved in temporarily to help with logistics.

In honesty there have been an awful lot of feel good Mojo moments of late, which would normally warrant happy blog posts but life has got in the way and I've not been feeling the joy much. Her first school play at Christmas, her 4th Birthday, her first wee on a potty (oversharing much Mummy?).  We've had baby's first steps a weird collision of excitement and pride, immediately followed by the pang of sorrow for what Mojo has missed out on. Not that Mojo cared, she clapped and laughed along with the rest of us. Mojo is smart enough to recognise the advantages of a mobile play mate to fetch and carry things to her!!

Mojo's progress and happiness are keeping me from wallowing in too much anger about the car. I've told baby that her Twirlywoo has gone to live with a little girl who didn't have a Twirlywoo and she's cool with that.

So when eventually the car gets sorted out and we return to normal and all the 'stuff' is replaced we can start a new sticker collection.

There will always be more achievements and more brilliance to reward.

4th Birthday fun in December