Tales of a Locked-In Mommy

Once upon a time (a couple of days ago), I was home with my sweet little girls. Charlie was having a sleep-over at his cousin's house. It was a weekday, so Forrest was at work. It was almost lunchtime, and Caroline and I were playing downstairs. Juliet woke up from her nap, so I went upstairs to get her. She had a full diaper, so I stayed up to change her. While I was doing that, Care Bear made her way upstairs too and was playing in the hallway for a minute or two before coming in the room and shutting the door. Then she jiggled the door handle and laughed and said "Me me lock it, mommy!" (Remember she calls herself "me me".) I didn't really think anything of it at first. I just thought she probably was struggling to get the door open but it didn't even occur to me that she had actually locked it until I tried the handle and it was indeed locked.
Here's the backstory on the door. When we bought our home and moved in, I noticed that the door to Juliet's room had key lock on the handle. It locked from the inside. I assumed that one of the many keys we'd been given at move-in fit that door. Well when Caroline learned how to work those twist locks on doors, she accidentally locked herself in Juliet's room and couldn't get out. So I searched and searched and tried every key in the house in the door and not a single one fit. So in a panic I called Forrest and he sent me some YouTube videos about how to use a credit card to unlock a door. I tried it and it worked pretty quickly. Then a few months later, Caroline started napping in Juliet's room and was consistently locking herself in, so I turned the doorknob around so it locked from the outside instead. It solved our problem at the time.
Well this time, it created a much BIGGER problem. There I was, in the room with a hungry baby and a toddler who was pleased as punch that she had locked the door, and I had no cell phone on me. No key to the door. Nothing.
My first reaction (after freaking out a little and saying a prayer with Caroline) was to dig in a drawer in the closet and find an old credit card to try my previously learned skill of unlocking the door with a card. But every angle I tried failed. I was on the wrong side of the door.
Next I attempted to pry the door from it's hinges, but I didn't have the right tools and the hinges were extremely tight.
My next move was to open the window and frantically look around, hoping that I would see a neighbor or somebody outside that I could call to for help (in the middle of January in below-freezing conditions).
For nearly an hour I rotated between these three activities in a desperate attempt to get us out of there. Meanwhile Caroline sat laying on the changing table pretending to take a nap, giggling, and saying "Mommy, me me lock it. Don't try it mommy. Door locked." And Juliet played happily, though she was getting fussier and hungrier every minute.
When I finally realized that neither of these three plans was going to work, I started scheming to pull out the window screen, climb out onto the roof and jump to the ground. I think I actually would have done that, too, if I'd had a way to get back into the house. Our front door was locked, back door locked, and although I could have used our code to get into the garage, the interior door to the garage was also locked. My next thought was that I could jump out and run to a neighbors house to borrow their phone to call Forrest, but his cell phone doesn't work in his office building and I don't have his office number memorized. Also the thought of leaving my kids alone in a room on the top floor with the window wide open was terrifying. Let alone the leap I'd have to make from the roof onto the grass below. So I ruled that out.
Finally I came to the realization that there was only one way I was going to get out of that mess. I had to kick the door down. I moved the girls back away from the door and got a little excited that I would actually be able to test my strength against a solid(ish) door. And then I kicked the door in. It took one solid kick to get the door on the other side of the frame, and then another good 2 or 3 kicks to get a gap big enough for me to get all three of us out through.
The whole time I was kicking the girls were just crying. Caroline kept telling me not to break the door, and Juliet had no clue what was going on except that there was a loud noise and Caroline was crying.
Once we finally got out, I called Forrest to tell him my tale. He just laughed and said it's a good thing I'm a she-hulk. Then he came home to take the door off the hinges and make the room accessible again. My dad came later and helped get the doorframe back in place. The door, on the other hand, is unfixable. I tried to be gentle (or at least as "gentle" as you can be when you're breaking down a door) but apparently that didn't help much.

Here she is in all her glory.

On the bright side, though, I felt like a Bona Fide Special Agent. You can call me Annie Walker, if you'd like.