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?  😀

Like A Tank

Back in October 2007 I bought a new truck…a 2004 Dodge Ram 1500 4×4. 

It was big and roomy.  It could haul the whole family and a load of firewood at the same time.  It was as good on the highway as it was in the mud.  It could gently pull in the driveway to keep from waking Ace, or it could let ‘er rip and pull a stump out of Grandpa’s yard.

Most importantly, it was safe.  One of the main reasons we decided on this truck was to protect Ace in the case of an accident.  I’m not the only dad that thinks this way either.  Check out BusyDad’s Dada Truck.

Unfortunately I was involved in an accident not too long ago (Thank goodness Ace was not riding with me).  I am not going to go into details about how it happened, because everything is not settled yet, but I will say that there was an accident.  There was damage to the front end of the other car, which happened to be a Honda Civic,  and the rear end of my truck.

I did not get a picture of the other vehicle, but I found a picture online that looks very similar to the Civic that I was involved in an accident with.

Wrecked Honda Civic

WOW!  Right?  The damage was extensive!  I would guess that it was totalled.

So what did the Dodge look like?

Dodge Ram Rear End Damage

That is an actual picture of my truck.  Would you guess that it was in the same accident as the Civic?  Me neither.

While I am sad that my truck was damaged in this accident, I am happy that it performed so well. 

People laugh at me all the time about how much gas I go through, about how big my truck is, about how uncomfortable it must be to drive it long distances…but it’s all worth it to me.  I walked away unscathed.   Anyone else who could have been inside would have too.  What else can you ask for?

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…

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