My Little Escapees

Well....I knew it would probably happen eventually and it finally did. My children escaped aka went on the lam aka made a break for it!! This is how it all went down: on Saturday I got ready to get in the shower and get cleaned up for work. I have a routine. I go around the house and make sure all doors are locked and dead bolted shut, get the boys settled with a cartoon of their choice in the living room and hop in the shower. Fast forward 10-15 minutes and I get out of the shower, wrap a towel around me and check to make sure the boys are doing o.k. Normally I find them in the exact same positions I left them in. This day, however, I find the front door standing wide open, t.v. off and no little boys in sight. I spot their open Spongebob umbrella at the bottom of the driveway. My heart stops and for a second I don't know what to do. Finally, I run to the bedroom, throw on a robe and run outside in the pouring rain, no shoes, towel still on my head.

I almost ran directly into my neighbor who was headed up my front steps. She asked where my husband was and I told her that he's at work and I can't find my kids. She tells me that she found one of them in her backyard and the other playing in the drainage ditch. She took them over to another neighbor's house to get dried off. I ran across the street to that neighbor's house where I found both boys safe and sound and my neighbor on the phone with 911. I tried to make it light and said, "well I see you found my children!" My neighbor (in a rather demeaning voice) says, "THEY WERE PLAYING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET!" Hmm...ok....I look down at my robe and bare feet thinking that it is pretty obvious what happened, right? Maybe some people are perfect mothers who never shower, feed their children all organic food and have children with perfect manners. I, on the other hand have children who burp loudly and then scream "Scuse me," who eat french fries and who break out of the house while mom's in the shower to play in the Damn rain!!! So....I gathered up my little escapees, thanked my neighbor and took my children home. Apparently the neighbor thought we should wait to go home until the police arrived....hmmm....I think not!!! As I walked in the door, the phone is ringing....it's Allen wanting to know why the neighbor called the 911 center we work in to report our children in need of care :) He explained it all to the responding officer and they didn't end up coming out after all....whew.

Once we made it safely inside the house, I again locked and dead bolted the front door and asked Nick to show me how he opened it. He immediately flipped the deadbolt open......wow.....I have no idea when he learned to do that. The next day, when I got ready to shower, I made sure lock all screen doors, deadbolt, regular lock and put child safety doorknob locks on all doors. I believe an escape attempt was made because I did find one deadbolt unlocked at some point during the day. When I took my shower, I locked the boys inside the master bedroom with me so I could watch them from the shower. They reminded me why I don't typically allow this. Max continuously tried to get in the shower with me (full clothed), unraveled rolls of toilet paper and shut off the DVD player which required me to get out of the shower over and over to restart the DVD. Sigh. We have been researching additional locks for the TOPS of all our doors and will hopefully be installing them in the next couple of days. Until then, hopefully there will be no more escapes and no more 911 calls!!