I lost my child twice in one day!

 Here is a fun (using the word very loosely!) blog post from 2010.

Title: I lost track of my child twice in one day! 

Last Friday was a bad parenting day for me. It all started with an innocent play date over at a friend's where I convinced myself that I heard The Girl and her friends in the back yard. They had just been there minutes before surly they were just hiding. Gentle calls for them to come out of their hiding spot morphed into loud screams and frantic running all over the neighborhood. There was an inviting school playground right across the street but would either kid actually cross the street after being ingrained with "Never Cross the street without a mommy or daddy!"? Ten to fifteen frantic minutes felt like many hours. Do we call the police? Where could they be? 

Finally we see a worried looking man pointing down the street at the end of the block. A crying Samuel is returned to my friend's arms. My girl is still missing. "Samuel where is Jessie? Where were you?" He points down the very long street and my daughter visible as only a speck is running down the sidewalk, thankfully in my direction! I meet up with the entirely unfazed girl. Samuel knew he shouldn't go so far away from home but my girl didn't think anything was wrong. "But I stayed on the sidewalk! Wasn't that safe?" 

A women with her small child approached us. She had seen the kids and asked them where they lived. Jessie had pointed in some other direction and according to the women was happily skipping down the street, helping herself to people's mail (apparently the mailboxes mounted street side were way to inviting!) When the women had approached them Samuel had run back, in the direction of his house crying but The Girl had just continued happily along.

On one hand I am glad she feels secure enough to venture away from us but it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep her safe. I am convinced she now knows that she should have a mommy or daddy with her BEFORE she turns any corner in addition to not crossing a street (and it isn't acceptable to take other people's mail) but in the case of less defined places I don't think she'll consider slowing down. I'm still not sure how long it would take her to think she was lost. Samuel was so upset but Jessie never looked back.

At her preschool they were considering a field trip to a local park but I did not think I could allow The Girl to attend when I wasn't there. One parent to four kids works very well in the contained preschool grounds but if Jessie could make a break from our friends  yard it isn't hard to imagine a momentary lapse in attention resulting in her wandering off. In ten minutes who knows where she might go. 

Later that same day we were back home and I decided to take a shower. Sweets joined me but when it came time to dry my hair she fled the scene. She went into her room and appeared to get busy with her legos. She closed the door and was very quiet. I could see her closed door from where I was drying my hair and I proceeded. On several occasions I turned off the hairdryer and glanced towards her door. The door was still closed and she was very quiet, which should have been my first clue that something was up but since she has recently gotten in the habit of playing with her toys while in her closet I just figured she was still in there. 

As I put my hairdryer away The Girl was suddenly in my room, "Look mommy, I cut my hair!"  (Tune in tomorrow for the photos) Oh no! I glance and see her door is still closed but she was not in there! She had left her room, closed the door behind her, found some scissors, climbed up on the sink in the other bathroom to look in the mirror and managed to cut her hair all without making enough noise for me to notice! OK the hairdryer makes noise but I stopped and listened several times and not once did I hear anything! 

We live in a very small house. It is hard to do anything without being heard in another room. I regularly do things in the kitchen or my bedroom while leaving Jessie to play on her own. I've always felt confident I would hear if anything was going awry. The level of stealth required to pull off her new hair style was truly impressive and fairly disturbing! For the second time in one day I had lost track of my daughter.  

My mother tells stories about me leaving our house and wandering the neighborhood when I was a preschooler. Her favorite is the story how I at about age 4, took my three year old sister in tow, and showed up at a neighbor's house at O'dark thirty in the morning asking for breakfast. "My mommy isn't up and I am hungry. Can we have some food." was my greeting! My husband's sister says they had to tie him to a tree to keep him from wandering off so it is clear Sweets comes by her wanderlust naturally. I can only hope the ability to keep wandering children alive is an equally inherited trait!