In our house, we turned all the locks around on the kid’s doors so they couldn’t lock themselves in their room. You see where this story is headed, right? We should’ve just replaced the door knobs but whatever – details. One day, I was reading to the kids in my youngest’s room at nap time. My oldest was in First Grade. My youngest was 18 months old ish and she decides to lock the door from the outside and close it locking us all inside her room. Luckily, she was in the room with us!
I did not have my phone on me and I needed to be able to get to the bus stop to pick up my oldest daughter. I thought about climbing out the window but we were on the second floor. I thought about opening the window and screaming as loud as possible but I might give someone a heart attack. I thought about kicking down the door like Wonder Woman. I thought about finding an axe like tool in the room and axing through the door like the guy in The Shining. I thought about tying some sheets together and rappelling down like Rapunzel but with sheets. Then, I realized I just needed to breathe.
I’ve watched alot of scary movies in my lifetime especially because I had teenage babysitters (older siblings) when I was younger and they let me watch things like Nightmare on Elm Street when I was in elementary school. :-p That didn’t have any side effects – none whatsoever. :-p I finally got my wits about me and noticed that there was a tablet on the girl’s bed. Great! So I emailed my husband at work explaining the situation.
Next thing I know, not even 5 minutes later, I see a hairy arm push the door open. I’m like – oh great – now I’m about to get murdered because there’s no way my husband could have gotten home that fast. The reason that thought was the very first thing that crossed my mind is because there were no side effects whatsoever to watching Nightmare On Elm Street when I was a kid. :-p Well, turns out, it was just my neighbor. My husband had contacted my neighbor to rescue me.
This was one of those times where I had taken a rest from cleaning for a few days and so my neighbor must have had to levitate to get up the stairs b/c there were toys everywhere! After he left, I did one of those forensic analysis of the house sessions where you walk around and survey all the crap the visitor must’ve seen.
I’m like – oh great – that’s where my kid just blew their nose and threw down the toilet paper on the floor instead of walking a few steps to the trash can. Oh and they decided to use q-tips apparently – they’ve never done that before – oh, lots of q-tips. There’s the area where the girls thought they would make a rainbow loom bracelet but three minutes in abandoned it but managed to still make the room look like a rubber ball exploded. There’s someone’s dirty underpants. Greeeeaaaat.. So glad my kid locked me in a room on this day. You know that feeling? With kids, you just don’t want any surprise visitors, amirite?
Although, I have a feeling that there are people out there who always have their house clean but I don’t want to know about them because then I would just feel bad. That happens in a land far, far away that is not my reality. Now that I look at the title of this post though, I realize that it could also apply to feeling shackled to your house at times. You know as a parent when you just want to go to the gym with your spouse and how easy that is without kids and how hard that is with kids?
Every. Single. Time. we take our kids to the gym day care, they get the plague. It never fails. And the last time, my husband caught it and actually had to take off work for a couple of days. Our kids are just not at that age where we can leave them at home by themselves for any length of time – maybe the older two but not the youngest. So, I feel like one day we are going to just go buck wild and like grocery shop all day(just us) or something when we can actually leave the house unattended, you know? B/c it’s been so long that we’ve been cooped up that it’s hard to imagine. One day in a land far, far away. :-p