Here is a little story for your enjoyment….

This morning Shaun and I woke up to the sounds of our alarm. As with every Monday morning, we take our time waking up, laying in bed hoping for yet another 20 minutes of sleep. But of course its inevitable that we have to get up and start our day. As with most mornings, we can hear Abby chattering and singing to herself in a language only she can understand. We are both half awake but for some reason she seems louder than normal. Finally Shaun gets up to start making her bottle and to get Abby out of bed for the morning. As he walks out of our bedroom towards Abby’s room, he passes the kitchen and stops short and then calls for me.

As I get out of bed I think to myself, great whats the problem now. Is the sink backed up? Do we have ants? Did Jack chew up yet another plastic piece of something? When I reach the kitchen I see Shaun standing there, with a look of disbelief. There sitting on the floor, playing with the foam board pumpkins that we purchased the say before is Abby and her best friend Doggy. We are in complete shock and keep asking one another if we are absolutely sure that we did not get Abby out of bed this morning? While we were half awake and dreading getting up, we certainly were not in a deep enough sleep to do anything with Abby and not remember.

I think most parents are just as shocked and concerned when they discover that their 11 and half month child has somehow escaped from their crib. Luckily something tripped Shaun’s car alarm about 45 minutes before we discovered Abby playing and when we went out to shut it off, Abby was sound asleep in her crib. This gave us the reassurance that she had not been out there for long. Once we got past that though, we then begin to worry about how in the world she got out!!

We decided to check things out in Abby’s room and when we walked in, we started to see what could have happened. Abby had thrown out all of her friends from her crib. But there was purpose in this. All of her friends were in a pile in the exact same area, just under her diaper stacker that attaches to her crib. The only thing we could think of was that she used her diaper stacker to shimmy down and free herself. She piled all of her friends to bring them with her and possibly use them as a safe landing. As my friend Erika put it… “it was a full on jailbreak”! What a smart little cookie!

After a good inspection for bumps, bruises and scrapes, of which she had none, we felt a little bit better. Needless to say we lowered her mattress to its lowest point possible and it took a few nights before I could rest easy again. Ahhhhhh parenthood!

(I am sorry to report that we do not have any pictures from this morning. I think we were in too much shock to think of taking any!)