Monday, October 6, 2008

Our daughter's first solo adventure

Sunday started as any other Sunday - up early, breakfast, church, Home Depot, lunch, nap, etc. Little did we know that our evening was going to be far from routine. First, we discovered our upper cabinets had to come out in one piece, so we had to call in favors for people to rush over and help us remove them. We are trying to reuse our cabinets, so we wanted to take them out gently. Second, I developed a clot in my PICC catheter so I had to run to the emergency room to have it de-clotted. Right before I headed to the ER Trinity asked if she could play outside, but since I was leaving and DH was in the kitchen, I said 'no'. DH then yells from the kitchen that he let her do it on Saturday while I was at work. *sigh* Okay, I caved and said fine assuming DH & Trinity had worked out some kind of arrangement. I'm waiting in the ER, which is pretty busy, when DH comes rushing in, looks around and runs out again. Uh, what the hell, I am thinking. So I have a friend of mine who is keeping me company when it dawns on me that Trinity must be missing. I can think of no other reason for his behavior. She leaves to help him search and I'm stuck in the stupid waiting room of the ER unable to do anything.

Turns out in the end that Trinity had asked if she could push her baby in her stroller on the sidewalk. DH had said yes, assuming she meant the sidewalk in front of our house. However, she decided to take her baby for a walk on the sidewalk on the busy street at the end of our block. Then, she apparently decided it would be fun to visit the park. The park is about 1/2 a mile from our house and involves crossing one of the top 5 busiest streets in our town. DH found her and she spent the rest of the evening sitting in the recliner. She is also unable to play outside for a few days at all and after that she must be supervised. She also had her TV priviledges taken away for last night and today until bed.

I'd love to be able to say 'I told you so.', but DH was so freaked by the whole incident I just don't have the heart. The bigger problem I see is that while she understood she was in trouble, she doesn't actually seem to think she did anything wrong. I have to admit that this worries me. We have always told her she cannot cross the street without an adult and we still enforce holding our hands when crossing streets, driveways & parking lots. When asked about why she thought it was okay to cross the street, her response was "But I thought I was old enough to cross by myself."

Call me crazy, but I see lots of gray hair in my future.

4 comments:

Melissa said...

Wow! How scary for you all! I'm so glad that she was safe in the end!

I hope this isn't just the beginning for you... :o)

Penny said...

Oh boy. We've had Tim go missing (he tried to follow me to the shop round the corner) and I completely understand the feelings. It's not good.

Brooke said...

Oh man, that's so scary! They just don't realize that they aren't all grown up yet. I try to give definite, clear limits to M, and sometimes she still doesn't listen. I wonder when we'll get to the point where they don't require constant supervision?!

Astarte said...

This is about the age when I started having similar troubles with my two. I kind of wonder if it's because they hear us tell them how Big they are all the time, only to have us remind them that they're still little in the next breath. I can see how it would be confusing for them, but it's heart-stopping for us!