Scary Stuff

I remember reading a post from Alicia that was almost exactly like this when Ava was a baby. I thought it was scary then, but now I know first-hand that it is TERRIFYING!! So here goes...

The mail was late yesterday, which means that it wasn't there when I went to get it in the morning while Jason was still home. About 6:00 pm, I remembered that I still needed to get the mail. So I threw on a light jacket and some shoes and went to get it. As I was walking out the front door, I felt a little hesitant to leave the girls in the house alone, even though our mailbox is right in front of our house and I was only going to be gone 20 seconds, tops. So, I left the door open. Well, I jogged out to the mailbox, grabbed the mail, and was jogging back to the house when somebody called my name. I turned around and my neighbor was out in the street in her van. She asked me if I still worked for JetBlue because she just started working for them. I talked to her for a few seconds with me standing on the porch and her at the street, but I was feeling like I was being rude yelling across the lawn. So I walked back down to the street. We talked for a few minutes about what things are like for the company right now and I was really enjoying the conversation, but I still felt nervous about the girls. So I finally told her that I needed to go check on the baby. She left and I went back up to the house. The door was closed. I turned the knob and pushed. It wouldn't budge. Brooklyn had closed the door and LOCKED THE DEADBOLT!! I had no key, no phone, only a light jacket and it was cold out, and I could see the baby through the door screaming her head off. Luckily Brooklyn saw me and came over to the door. After she figured out that I wasn't playing a game, she started trying to let me in. She kept turning the door knob and saying "It's locked, Mommy, it's locked! Open the door! Unlock it!" I was yelling at her to "Turn the top one!" And then she started turning the lock on the doorknob. Oh gosh, it was horrifying. After a few minutes of this, I really didn't know what I was going to do. The neighbors must have thought I was crazy because I was yelling so she could hear me. I thought about asking one of them for help, but I was so reluctant to leave the girls out of my sight again and I didn't know how a neighbor was going to help anyway. Eventually, Brooklyn figured out how to turn the deadbolt and I got inside. What a relief! I guess in the future I should always trust my instincts! It was so traumatizing that I was shaking for probably the next hour.

Today while Brooklyn was about half-way through her nap, I realized that I was tired too. I decided to lie down with Addy in my bed for a little bit. Well, Brooklyn took an extremely short nap and came to wake me up about 5 minutes later. I was pretty out of it and told her to just go watch cartoons in the living room and I'd be right there. So she left. Well... I fell back to sleep. I really didn't think I would!! I woke up and it was 25 minutes later. The house was really quiet. I felt this wave of terror wash over me as I remembered that she can now open the front door. I envisioned her walking through traffic on Main Street. I jumped out of bed to go look for her. Luckily, she was safe. Pantsless and eating a bag of chocolate chips, but safe. Thank goodness!