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.

So long, 7:00 bedtime.

Charlie started climbing out of his crib when he was 17 months old. He didn't just climb out once and then not do it again, like a lot of kids do. Once he figured out he could escape there was no keeping him in. So we promptly took the bottom out of his crib and put his mattress flat on the ground to buy us a few more inches and a little more time. That worked for a couple of months until he figured out that he could tip his entire crib over and use the slats as monkey-bars. By the time he had that down, Caroline had finally gotten brave enough to climb out of her crib on a consistent basis. They were about 20 months old at this point. So we heeded the advice of some friends with much older twins and turned their cribs upside down on top of them like cages. At naptime and bedtime we would lift one side of the crib up off the ground, they would get on hands and knees and climb right in. It wasn't a perfect solution but it at least kept the madness contained to their cages. That lasted until just before they turned 2.

One day we had the brilliant idea to try out toddler beds. Sheer genius, I tell you (insert eye roll here). The first night we were completely shocked that they actually stayed in their beds. I thought it was going to be perfect and wonderful and way better than cages. I couldn't have been more wrong! It didn't take long for them to start getting out of bed. And pull every single article of clothing out of their drawers. And try on every single sock and every single shoe. And try fit six bowties around their waist at a time. Every time I entered their room, there was no floor to be seen.

But at least the mess was contained. Their room only. I could live with that. And then they figured out how to open doors. The dreaded day of days. I woke up at 4:30 AM with a tiny little finger (not mine) stuck up my nose. Good thing I had doorknob covers in stock and ready to pull out when needed. It took Charlie less that a day to figure out how to break them off the doorknobs (on Caroline's bidding, probably. I always say she is the brains and he is the muscle). For over a week they woke up between 4:30 and 5:30 AM. If there is one good thing about that, though, it is that it made me really appreciate their standard 7:30 AM wakeup time, which I used to think was far too early for little humans to be up and roaming around.

We passed the super early wake-up phase, thank heavens. And now we are stuck in the "never going to sleep" era. Oh how I miss those days of putting them down at 7:00 and knowing they would be asleep before long. I used to really look forward to bedtime. And now I dread it. Dread with a capital D. Caroline wants the light on so she can read. Charlie hates the light on but wants the door open with the hall light on. Caroline doesn't like the door open and keeps getting up to shut it. Charlie wants his bear to sit up next to him in bed but his bear keeps falling over, because it's stuffed and stuffed bears don't sit up very well. And when stuffed bears don't sit up very well, that's cause for many many tears in our house. Caroline demands that every single book in sight be on her bed. But then she can't lay down because the books are taking up the entire surface area of her bed. And heaven forbid you take the books out of the room. She NEEDS her books. If there is even a single book on top of the dresser, you'd better believe she will be found standing in one of the drawers trying to climb onto the top of the dresser to get it down and safely into her bed with the other books. Charlie has at least eight blue blankies. And try as I might to hide all but one or two of them in the dresser, he goes to bed with a couple of them and cries and cries that he needs "mo' blankies." He would steal Caroline's in a heart beat if she'd let him.

You get the gist. Lots of tears and bedtime. And when there aren't tears, there are giggles. I love giggles. But giggles are now an indication that somebody is out of bed and running around the room with a bare bum and yelling "nakey nakey!". How do you even get mad about that? Especially when accompanying the bare bum are a pair of blue dinosaur rain boots and the cutest little head of white hair you've ever seen?

Long story short, our 7:00 bedtime has turned into 7:00 bedtime that doesn't actually end until 9:30. I'm not too hopeful that it will get better anytime soon!

Double Diaper Trouble

If I've been a little absent lately, it's because I've been cleaning up poop. Not even kidding. I should warn you that this post will include a lot of talk about poop and other unpleasant bodily functions. Not mine, thankfully, but disgusting none the less.

I don't know what kind of a special affinity my children have for pooping on me, but they've had it since they were newborn. All three of them. And I'm not just talking blowouts or diaper explosions, I mean like pooping all over my leg in the middle of a diaper change, or pooping on me when I pick them up to put them in the tub. I've been pooped on more times than I can count. But little exclusively-breastfed-baby-poop isn't so bad. It cleans up pretty easily and doesn't smell awful. But the bigger they get, the worse it gets.

The twins were about 15 months old when they (and by they, I mean Caroline) learned how to take off their diapers. That's the way it works around here. One figures out how to do it and does it over and over again until the other learns how. So when they say "double trouble" for twins, they really should say quadruple trouble. Because not only are there two children with their own ideas of how to get into trouble, but they are each learning from and copying the other's trouble-making skills. Learning to un-diaper themselves was one of those nasty, awful, no good trouble-making skills. And they both mastered it very early on. I think it's payback for laughing about one of my besties' babies learning to un-diaper before her mom was ready to go through potty training. I had no idea.

When they started un-diapering, I was pretty big pregnant with Juliet. I wanted to potty train, but I knew it was a bit early and frankly I just didn't have the energy to do it. So I opted for duct tape instead. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. I got to where I would go around the entire circumference of the diaper around their waist two times with a strip of duct tape. But even then they would somehow weasel themselves out of it.

They got into a really awful habit of taking their diapers off in the middle of the night. So then they would wake up sopping wet. And on some very unfortunate mornings, I would walk in to the awful stench of tiny human poop spread all over their sheets. And their hair. And their crib slats. And under their fingernails. And sometimes (I shudder even to think it) even smeared around their mouths. Gag. Cut to me rinsing out pajamas and sheets in the toilet, wiping my babies down with wet wipes and spraying them off (from a distance) in the shower. I seriously think I deserve a medal for the amount of poop I've had to clean up in my less than two year stint as a mother.

After Juliet arrived, I decided it was time to potty train. I committed myself to three entire days and nights diaper-free. Day 1 was awful. I think we maybe had one success. The entire day. Potty training two little bums at the same time is a lot harder than I expected. It seemed like each time one was sitting on the potty, the other had an accident. And trying to put two little bums on the potty every 20 minutes while also breastfeeding a newborn and trying to maintain peace and cleanliness in our home is no small task.

Day 2 was better. After I caught her mid-pee and stuck her on the potty to finish, Caroline seemed to get the hang of it. Charlie would pee on the potty but had a hard time going #2. By day 3 Caroline had it down and rarely had accidents after that. Charlie, not so much. He went back into diapers on day 4. That was about 2 months ago when the twins were 20 months old. Caroline still does really well for the most part. I still take extra undies and pants with us everywhere we go, and I still wash her sheets nearly every morning because she wets the bed, but I consider here successfully potty trained.

Charlie still rips his diaper off nearly every night. I've given up on duct tape because it's a pain in the rear and it doesn't work half the time anyway. So every morning when I go into their room I cross my fingers that it's only a wet diaper I have to deal with. The finger crossing works exactly 67% of the time. The other 33% of the time I'm not so lucky. And each time, the award that I think I deserve gets bigger and bigger.

I'm almost out of size 4 diapers. When I run out, I have sworn that I will never put another diaper on that boy. I figure I'm cleaning up his poop anyway, so I may as well be doing it in the name of potty training. Heaven help me!

And with that, I hereby promise I will never talk about poop this much ever again. The end.

Flashback to the 90's

I may have been a slightly awkward pre-teen. And by slightly awkward, I mean REALLY awkward. Everybody goes through a stage right? I wore Harry Potter glasses, never brushed my hair, and hadn't quite grown into my long arms and legs. There's a reason my sister nicknamed me "Lurpy." I really was. And to add to it all, I was terribly uncoordinated.


What does that have to do with anything, you ask? Well, yesterday as I dropped a 6th egg out of the refrigerator I had a flashback to 1999, or maybe the early 2000's. It was awkward, uncoordinated pre-teen and early-teen me, dropping a brand-new jug of milk on the front steps and watching it shatter. Or tripping over my own feet in the middle of a soccer field with nobody else around me to disguise it.


Flash-forward to today. And I'm pretty much the same person, plus a husband and 2.5 kids. I don't remember being this clumsy when I was pregnant with the twins, but maybe that's because all I ever did was sit in a chair with my feet propped up and watch reruns of Psych. But now that I'm pregnant AND I still have to care for my two tiny humans, the clumsiness is more apparent than ever.


And it's not just dropping eggs. This morning Charlie and Caroline were playing on a chair together and I was sitting on the floor next to them. Caroline dove off the chair and into my arms, and I lost my balance and tipped both of us over onto the ground. On the way down, I hit into the chair and knocked Charlie (who was standing up without holding on) off on top of me and Caroline, resulting in two crying babies and one extra-long contraction.


I have to double check the floors 10 times before bed to make sure there are no toys, clothes, pillows etc. in my path from the bed to the bathroom. Because if there is so much as a cheerio on the ground, I can guarantee my feet will find it and somehow trip over it (as evidenced by multiple trip-and-falls per day).


Thank goodness I only have 4.5 more weeks of this. Any longer and I'm not sure we'd all survive!

The Rhinoceros and the Puppy Dog

A few weeks ago it was pointed out to me that Charlie is a little bit of a bulldozer. Or a "rough and tumble" little boy. I prefer to think of him as a rhinoceros. Seriously though, that kid has no fear. He also has no regard for anything or anyone that gets in his way. If Caroline is trying to get to a toy on the other side of an obstacle, she crawls around it. Not Charlie. He goes right over it, even if "it" is Caroline's face. Or mine. He literally headbutts his sister 10 times a day. She doesn't mind so I usually just let it happen. Except when he does it at church - then I at least try to appear like I'm trying to keep him from bowling her over. And he dives off of everything. I mean DIVES. Head first. From the couch onto the end table. Out of the bathtub. Into the bathtub. Down the stairs. He seriously falls 378 times a day. And gets bruises and bloody noses and bloody lips and any other kind of skin abraison you can think of. I promise I do try to keep him safe. I've seriously considered just wrapping him from head to toe in layers of bubble wrap. He eats like a rhino too. I give him half a banana most mornings to start his breakfast. He picks it up, squishes it between his cubby little fingers and then tries the shove the entire thing in his mouth at once. What doesn't make it in ends up smeared on his face, his arms, his high chair, and the wall. And anything that is left on his tray ends up bouncing off when he pounds his tray with his fists just for the fun of it. To save myself some trouble I've started stripping him down to a diaper for every meal and then throwing him under the sink afterwards to clean him up. It's just easier.

Caroline, on the other hand, is the most dainty little eater I've ever seen. She rarely drops food or gets anything on her face. She is perfectly clean all the time. Other than the cleanliness, everything she does reminds me of a puppy. And that's not just because she barks nonstop. She follows me everywhere. From room to room, right on my heels. And if she's playing with a toy when I leave and she wants to bring it with her, she carries it in her mouth. I'm not kidding, she really does. It's pretty adorable. She is always happy and she pants when she gets excited. And she is so incredibly smart. My parents have stairs at their house, so my dad built a gate many many years ago to keep us from falling. It has been in place for roughly 30 years. The latch isn't super easy to open - some of my nieces (4-6 years old) even struggle to get the latch open and closed. Not Caroline. She watched intently while people would open and close it, and the figured out how to do it herself. She sneaks over and opens it and tries to get Charlie to go down the stairs and fetch all the toys they threw down there. Crazy girl. 

And then this happened today. They are both so smart. They watch what I do and then try to copy it. They LOVE going outside, and clearly they are determined to find a way to get out whenever they want. I'm in big trouble. My little rhino and the puppy dog sure do keep me on my toes!