she came in through the bathroom window

...sometimes, when you have a feeling you should do something, you should take that as a warning and go ahead and do it. case in point, just last week, i had the feeling that we should remove the lock from our bathroom door before cadence locks herself in there. that thought went in one brain cell and out another (such is the plight of a working mom who has no interest in being an ALPHA working mom). well, sure enough, we had some of my high school friends over last night, and while all the grownups were busy yakking away, cadence managed to shut herself in the bathroom and turn the deadbolt.

i managed to hear her banging on the door and yelling for me, so i went to see what the ruckus was. at first, i thought ted was in there with her, as he hadn’t been w/ the rest of us in the dining room. then when i saw that he was in the living room doing magic tricks for my friend jen’s 5 year old son vinnie, i knew we were in trouble, everybody, which included my friends josh, connolly, olarn, jen, her son vinnie, ted and myself, immediately crowded around the area outside the bathroom door.

by this time, cadence was hysterical and screaming and crying in a way that almost made ME lose it. she just kept banging on the door and desperately rattling the doorknob, even though we kept trying to get her to turn the lock. she just didn’t understand what we were saying, or was too frantic to follow instructions. i’m sure if i’d been on the other side of the door, she would’ve just played around until she figured out how to turn the lock again. i guess when a child is that little and that terrified, they just don’t think straight, and i don’t blame her.

in the meantime, we tried unscrewing the doorknob, which did no good as there was no keyhole behind the encasement of the knob. we didn’t want to kick down the door (like they do in the movies) because cadence was on the floor right behind the door, and we didn’t want to hurt her. i called my downstairs neighbor diane who used to own the building to ask her if she had any idea what we could do, but it being a deadbolt, she didn’t have any suggestions. we decided the only thing to do was to tear the doorframe away, so connolly and i ran down to the basement to find a crowbar. i don’t know what i would’ve done if connolly hadn’t been w/ me, as i was so frantic that i couldn’t even find the light to the tool room. connolly found it, thank goodness, and he had the presence of mind to locate the crowbar too. i didn’t even know what a crowbar would look like, let alone locate it in a tool room i’d been in a total of once before.

cadence had exhausted herself and fallen asleep by this time, as evidenced by a lack of response from the other side of the door. of course, being the paranoid freaked out mommy, i was ready to jump out of my skin because i couldn’t somehow walk bodily through that door like a ghost (or jesus) and scoop her into my arms and make sure she was actually alive and breathing. well, with the help of the crowbar and the sheer muscle power of my friends and after what seemed like HOURS, we finally managed to pry the door open.

i rushed into the bathroom and found little cadence, asleep facedown on the cold tile floor right behind the door. i gathered her up into my arms and she woke up and immediately resumed her hysterics where she had left off. i started crying too and had to go into the living room to compose myself. she sounded so sad as she cried in my arms—a mixture of residual fear of having been abandoned and relief at being reunited with and reassured of mommy’s love. she soon calmed down and kept saying over and over, ‘i’m okay. i’m okay. the door. the door. i’m okay. i’m okay.’ she told us in the few words she had that she’d been sad but now she was okay, and she was so sweet and tender with everybody who had taken part in the rescue. she even kissed the door as a gesture of goodwill and forgiveness before going to bed that night, telling it she was okay now. i swear, that kid KILLS me with how sweet she can be sometimes...

...in retrospect, i am intrigued by how primal my urge to claw through the door was. the helplessness i felt at the time was just devastating. i knew that cadence was safe and that we’d get her out, even if it would mean calling in the fire department. still, it was unbearable to me that she would think we had abandoned her and that we wouldn’t be coming to scoop her up into our arms and that she was being LEFT. ALL. ALONE. we have never let her cry-it-out for sleep training purposes, and she has always had at least another comforting adult (grandma, uncle, church friend) to hold her if we weren’t around when she was crying. so this was literally the first time she’s experienced a sense of abandonment without the availability of a shoulder to cry on, which i think would have made a world of difference.

...anyhoo, i am so thankful that my friends were there to help keep me calm and to reassure me that it was all going to be okay soon. i’m sure if it had just been ted and me, i would’ve been absolutely no help. most likely, i would've assumed the fetal position on the floor and rocked myself back and forth until the whole ordeal was over.

suffice it to say, that lock will not be going back on the door…