Ever Lost Your Kid?

The other morning Momma woke up and heard the TV on downstairs…and it was on cartoons.  Ace has never gone down the stairs before in his life (without rolling down them).  She went downstairs to find Ace running around the downstairs nekkid as a jay bird!!

Apparently, he took off his jams and diaper and decided to let the boys air out a bit…

Then she noticed a Fed Ex package sitting inside the living room next to the front door.  She figured that I met the Fed Ex guy on my way out the door and threw the package inside…but I didn’t.

So our best guess is that Ace unlocked the front door and opened it when the Fed Ex guy knocked… probably greeting him in his birthday suit.   The Fed Ex guy didn’t see a parent around, threw the package inside and shut the door.

Thank goodness it was our honest Fed Ex guy at the door, and not a child molester!!!

We have had a few things in place to keep this from happening…a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs, and a chain lock on the front door.

However, when I leave for work I can not lock the chain lock because you can only lock it from the inside.  And the baby gate?  I know I shut it.  So Ace found some way of forcing it open and then shut it behind him…or he climbed over it.

Then a few days later I wake up to go to work and went to check on Ace before I left.  He got sick in the middle of he night and we had to change his sheets at 3 AM, so I was making sure he didn’t puke all over himself again…

He was not in his bed.

I checked the baby gate down the stairs and it was shut.  The chain was still on the door.  He has to be in the house somewhere!?

I checked all the closets thinking that maybe he climbed in there and slept for the night.  I checked all the rooms upstairs and even in the bathtub.

Ace was no where to be found!

So eventually I go downstairs to find Ace lying in the middle of the living room floor, fast asleep, with his Teddy and Blanky where he apparently fell asleep watching cartoons in the middle of the night.

He had shut the gate behind him and could not get it back open to go back upstairs to bed.

One of the scary things is that he isn’t the most graceful person going down the stairs, and he likes to carry 20 times his weight in stuffed animals down with him.  I know I am going to wake up one morning the sound of THUMP THUMP THUMP as he is tumbling down the stairs.

And the sad thing is there is no way to gate off the top of the stairs!!

Maybe we’ll have to lock him in his room…but I’m sure that is against all kinds rules to Children Services .  😀

So, we’ve been practicing going down the stairs.  If he’s going to do it, we might as well teach him the safe way to do it.  Hand on the wall.  One step at a time.  Put down the stuffed animals.  Quit horsing around!

And now I leave through the side door…which he hasn’t figured out how to open yet.  This way the chain lock can stay on the front door.

Can you imagine the look on the Fed Ex guy’s face when a butt naked two year old answered the door?  😀

Our Yearly Photo Shoot With Lotz Studios!

Remember a few weeks back…I told you I was excited to go get our yearly pictures done?  Every year since ace was born we have called up Lotz Photography, here in Columbus, and they do an amazing job of capturing  Ace’s personality…

Ace

They have posted some of the pictures from this years photo shoot on their blog:
http://www.lotzstudios.net/blog/hoylman-family/

I just got the rest of the pictures today (125 pictures total!), so I’ll write up a post about our experience, and post a few more pictures in the very near future.  😀  Stay tuned!

…and while you are at the Lotz Studios website, see just how many pictures of Ace you can find…leave a comment with the number of pictures you found, and if you are right?  We’ll see…  😀

Dad, Here Is The Problem…

Wordless Wednesday

Dad, Here Is The Problem...

More Of A Treat Than A Trick

Ace Trick Or Treat 2009So this year was a pretty fun one for Trick-Or-Treat!

The past few years Ace could really give a crap.  I think it was more of an inconvenience for him actually.  He probably saw Trick-Or-Treat as just wearing some uncomfortable clothes…being made to walk (ride in the stroller or Dad’s arms) an insanely long distance…being surrounded by people with bad customes…and it was all for nothing!  He didn’t even like candy!

But, this year was a different story.  I was so proud of him.  We took off from Grandma’s house walking…yes actually walking this year.  He was carrying his candy bucket, kept his hat on, and only tried ripping his costume off a few times.  😀

Ace walked house to house, up and down stairs, for six whole blocks without even being asked to be carried.  (My arms thanked him)  😀

There was some people trying to be scary to the little kids by wearing scary masks while passing out the candy.  We walked up to one house and here comes a girl about Ace’s age with tears flying.  I thought about walking past this house to keep Ace from getting scared, but then I changed my mind.  After all, Halloween is all about being a little scared, right?

Ace walked up to the scary guy with some weird mask on and just stared at him like he was thinking, “What the hell is wrong with your face?”  Ace took his candy and calmly walked to the next house.  I was rolling… 😀

After about 6 blocks Ace has had enough and his candy bucket probably weighed about as much as he did.  We called it a night and went inside to check the candy for tampering.  There were a few pieces where I deemed that a taste test was necessary…  😀

Next year’s post will probably be about how out of breath I will be after chasing him from house-to-house, keeping him out of the street, and my sugar deprevation.  😀

A Stress Reliever…

I drove three hours to Cleveland today to fix some machinery.  That’s what I do.  If you follow me on Facebook, you see my updates every now and again from different parts of the country…fixing machinery.

It is very stressful.  If they call me in to fix the machine there has many times been two or three other people before me that couldn’t. 

Traveling, long hours, tough problems, businesses losing money because their equipment is not running, and it is all on my shoulders to make this large machine do it’s job once again.  I am the last defense.

Well, today I was stressed out because I was waiting for UPS to arrive with the part I needed to fix this particular problem.  It was delaying me by a couple hours already and I really wanted to get out of there and start that three hour drive home, so that I could sleep in my bed tonight…not a hotels. 

My cell phone rang.  The caller ID said it was from our house phone.

I answered, “Hello?” All I heard was silence…

“Heeelllooo?”, I said.

And then plain as day I hear, “Hi Daddy! (Click)” 

I call our house back and Momma answers the phone.  I asked her if she just called me and handed the phone to Ace to say “Hi”, and she said “No?”.

Momma has tried and tried and tried to get Ace to say “Hi Daddy!” over the phone when I am out of town for work, and he never does.  He listens for a while and then starts pushing buttons. 😀

And today?  He picked up the phone and called me all by himself…just to say “Hi Daddy!”

Yup.  Today was a good day.  😀

Hostinger