the girl who is a bad mommy

I awoke to a parent's worst nightmare this morning: a policeman pounding on the door asking, "are you missing a child?" And I was! And I didn't even know it!

The day started like most. my eldest woke me up at 8 and I looked over his homework, made sure he had his snack, checked to make sure he was wearing underwear (the boy likes going commando) and sent him off to school. Then, blissful silence. The other two were still asleep. So I figured I could get a little extra shut-eye, and went back to bed.

An hour later, I'm woken by the aforementioned pounding. Apparently my youngest had opened the window and pushed through the screen (Thank God we live on the first floor!) and been wandering the complex. Naked. Oh yeah, he's going through a nudist phase and everything was stripped off--including his diaper. From what I can figure, he had gone a building over, climbed the stairs and been trying to open the door to a neighbor's condo. (She doesn't speak English, so I got this all through simple Spanish words and pantomime.) She enlisted the help of another neighbor and they apparently tried to knock on our door, but since our bedroom is in the far back, we didn't hear it. They finally called the police.

Can you imagine how terrible I felt? Not only that, the officer is immediately questioning why he's naked, why we didn't know he was gone, and why our middle guy has on a dirty diaper. I work nights. I get home very late and then tend to stay up another hour or two eating "dinner", watching something tivo'd and unwinding. If I get the chance to sleep in because my children are, I take it. I am not going to wake a sleeping child. Well, now I feel completely selfish for having that attitude.

This isn't the first time he's "escaped." We have THREE locks on our front door, two locks on the back door, in addition to the lock on the screen door and a child safety gate. Now we have to add extra locks to the windows. The officer was saying there was no way he could have opened that window by himself--implying, of course, that we opened it and left two small children unsupervised--but they don't know my son. He is completely capable. He surprises me daily with what he can do that he isn't "supposed" to be able to. Our house is like Fort Know, and it isn't to keep people OUT, it's to keep my youngest IN!

Anyway, my ulcer is tearing me apart and my hair is probably three shades of gray. I don't know whether to spank him or hug him. Anyway, here is a picture of our Houdini.