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?  😀

It’s Lock Down Time!

Ace and I were outside enjoying the nice weather we’ve been having lately.  He was playing in his sandbox, on his swing-set, kickin’ his ball…ya know all the fun outside stuff a kid does.

I, on the other hand was cleaning up the crap that had somehow managed to blow from everyone else’s yard into ours over the past few Winter months.  I then started to pull some of the weeds that had taken over our flower beds.

This whole time Ace was happy playing in the very back of the yard which is completely fenced in.  Soon he ventured up toward the house and was playing on the deck.  I was working near the deck and could see Ace in plain site.

I turned around to gather up some crap out of the yard.  When I turned back around, less than 30 seconds later…Ace was not in sight.

I stood up and could not see the little booger head anywhere…

Ya see he has had this fetish for the driveway lately…the only un-fenced section of the yard.  He wants to exit the back yard and venture into the wilderness of the driveway and front yard.

I got up and ran to the driveway hoping to see Ace toddling not to far from me, but he was not in sight.  “Shit!  Where did he go!”  I ran out front…looked left….looked right…nothing.

I ran back to the back yard and made sure I did not somehow miss him if he was hiding behind the pool, or hiding behind the slide of the swingset.  Nothing…the kid was GONE!

My vocabulary at the moment had been reduced to…”Shit! F#&%! Shit! F#$@!”

I ran back out front again to have another look.  I went around to the other side of the house…looked up and down the street…nothing.  My chest felt heavy, yet my heart was racing.

“Momma is going to kill me!”  (My vocabulary suddenly gained 6 words.)

I ran out back to look one more time…and there he is…coming out of the damn shed all happy and giddy.  Looking up at the birds in the trees out back…just happy to be outside.

It’s no wonder I’m losing my hair and turning Grey at a rapid rate!  😀

Guess what I did the very next weekend…

There will be no escaping on Daddy's watch!

There will be no escaping on Daddy's watch!

I built a gate!  There will be no escaping on Daddy’s watch!  😀

Let Me Outta Here!

babygate.png
Let Me Outta Here!

Aaaahhhh! The sacred baby gate! What would we do with out them?

Well, Ace is now very mobile and has taken to the stairs. He can go up, but he only knows one way down…tumbling.

So, for his safety (and our sanity) we put up a few baby gates. One at the bottom of the stairs leading upstairs, and one at the top of the stairs leading to the basement.

So now I can check off another baby proofing task. Next task…baby proofing the dog food bowl! Any ideas?

Recommendation

By the way, if any of you out there are questioning which type of baby gate to get I would highly recommend the type that we are using. It is an Evenflo Simple Step Pressure Gate.

Things I like about it:

  • Easy to install…no drilling or screwing into the walls.
  • It is strong…I could not knock it down, so I know Ace can not.
  • It has a swing open door…I can easily open the gate to walk through without having to take the whole gate down every time I want to go up the stairs.
  • Child proof latch…the latch is a bit cumbersome at first, but once you get the hang of it, it can easily be opened with one hand. If Ace gets this thing open he is a genius!

Again, I highly recommend this baby gate. Get more information about this gate at Amazon.com…

SuperBaby or SuperDad?

SupermanAce has been getting more and more mobile in the past couple weeks. A little over a month ago I was so excited to see him get up on all fours. Now he is exploring the house and pulling himself up into a standing position while holding on to some object…usually his Excersaucer or the dog, Buddy.

He has a tendency to fall and bump his head, so I let him stand on the couch. He stands at the back of the couch holding onto the back cushion. I sit on the floor to keep him from falling off the couch if he happens to fall straight backwards. Usually he just sits down or falls sideways.

Here lately he has been doing really well. He will stand there for 10 minutes with no problems. When he wants down he will fall to his knees and then to his belly.

I realized today that I have not got a picture of him standing like this yet. But I did not realize that he had one more super stunt in store for me that I had not seen!

As I backed up to get a good angle for the picture he (in slow motion) leaps backwards…slowly falls until his bottom hits the couch cushion…bounces up in the air…his feet fly high over is head as he exits the couch’s airspace and starts falling to the floor. I (in slow motion still) drop the camera…dive across the floor with my arms extended…I see him falling…I see my hands getting closer…he has almost hit the floor now…and amazingly my hands slide underneath him and stop his fall…Whew!

I seriously caught him about a half an inch from the floor! One hand caught his face and the other his midsection.

As I gathered my breath (and my sanity) I was awaiting his scream from the fear of falling so violently or from hitting my hands with so much force.

To my amazement, as I rolled him over, he had this shit eating grin on his face! If he could talk he would have said, “That was fun Dad…Let’s do it again!!!”

I don’t know what was more “Super”…my diving catch or his daredevil stunt!

Hot Cars – A Death Trap!

I hope that none of you dads out there reading this would ever do something as stupid and mindless as this!

“No charges will be filed against a middle school administrator whose toddler daughter died when she was left in her mother’s SUV for about eight hours on a day when temperatures reached about 100 degrees…”

Seriously! A little common sense here! Damn!

Kids Left In Car + Hot Day = Dumb Ass Decision!

To everyone out there…please, please, please use your head!

You can read the full story from NBC4i here.

Hostinger