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March 21, 2006
locked out
As adorable as Thaddeus is, the guy has no legs. He’s basically got four feet connected to his shoulders. So every time he has to go outside (often!), he needs help getting down the 250 steps from our kitchen, to the deck, to the yard. This means you have to hoist his dense, sausage-shaped, thirty-pound bod onto your shoulder while he makes himself completely stiff and tries to slide out of your grasp. To complicate matters, he’s often in a state of semi-arousal so you have to make sure your wrist isn’t touching his wee-woo because that would be unimaginably gross.
One recent morning, as I entered the home stretch of my husband being gone for a week, I brought Thad outside for his morning business. It was bitterly cold and early, because the Bean’s new thing is getting up between 5am and 6am and sneaking around the house like a weird little ghost. I picked up Herr Stiff Body and carried him down the stairs to the backyard. Much to my surprise, when I returned to the house, the door was shut and locked. There was Bean staring at me from behind an also shut and latched baby gate at the top of the landing inside the house. He’d done locked me out!
It was one of those situations when your brain quickly assesses the situation and shoots through a series of probable responses in about fifteen seconds:
1. The door is not really locked. (Test)
2. The door is locked. (Spare key?)
3. Check for key in flowerbox (Key is missing)
4. Curse husband. Unattended toddler inside house! Situation shifting from inconvenient to potentially hazardous!
5. Cell phone (Nope. And who would you call, Keys ‘R’ Us?)
6. Neighbors (Possibly, but it would mean leaving toddler alone briefly. Plus, it is too early, plus you hate them)
7. Break window, climb in (Choose potential window, check garage for weapon) Expensive option, may be dangerous with the broken glass etc.
8. Consider asking toddler to get his step-up stool and climb baby gate, then unlock door (Assess danger factor: high) Abort, abort!
9. Check all external entry points before breaking glass or contacting neighbors Click click click click (Yes. Proceed)
The Bean and I managed to stave off collective mother/son panic as I directed him to follow me through the house to each door and window. He was so cute and so brave; I could tell he was scared but he’s also really into being helpful right now so he was all business checking out various locks and trying to open them. Being two, he wasn’t that helpful in this capacity. Fortunately, my husband and I are big dummies so I was able to pop off a storm window and enter through a ground floor window that was conveniently unlocked. Hi! Come murder us! Once I made it into the house there was much celebrating, which involved hugs, jellybeans, and Dora references. Because we did it! Yes, we did it.
This experience reminded me of when my husband and I went back to work after being home with the Bean for six months. My mom came out to Seattle to help with the transition. For our first day back in the workforce as parents, my mom had very sweetly prepared a delicious dinner and even filled our living room with candles to welcome us home. There was a torrential rainstorm that night, and that house also had front steps and a reluctant (different) dog. My poor mom carried our old dog down the steps in the rain, the wind blew the door shut and it locked, and there in the middle of the living room was our six-month old with lit candles all around him and the stove on in the kitchen. We pulled in front of the house to find her gibbering into a cell phone she had borrowed from someone walking by and clutching an also-borrowed umbrella. We were like, um, hello, what is going on? Tearfully, she explained. We all peered into the front window and there was the Bean, hanging out in his command center happy as can be. If he could have waved, he would have.
Like so many of my tales, this one has a moral: leave a key outside, put it back if you use it and please, let your mother know where it is.
Posted by Max at March 21, 2006 10:37 PM