When Mark and I designed our basement, we thought it would be a good idea to put a lock on the office door. That seemed like a good idea up until Isaiah was locked inside the room.
Before I continue, let me assure you that it is no one's fault that the baby was locked in the room. From listening to my kids, you would think that the door somehow magically locked AND closed itself. I've always believed in miracles. It was definitely not the girls fault. Micah couldn't really defend himself- he just said that Isaiah did it by himself.
Anyway, I was putting the kids to bed. The girls were already in their PJs, but the boys never showed up to put their PJs on. I walked downstairs into the basement and saw Micah playing with his blocks. Isaiah was happily sharpening pencils, crayons, tips of glue bottles, paperclips - what ever he could fit into the pencil sharpener. I walked towards him to stop his sharpening-fest when I tried to open the door. The handle didn't budge.
At first I was glad that he was sharpening random items. He had no idea that he was locked in the room. I went to the place where the keys were SUPPOSED to be. No luck. I looked where I keep the tools to open the doors that lock but don't have a key. No luck. This is when I started to get nervous. I looked back in the room. Isaiah was still sharpening, but he was running out of ammunition. Mark wasn't home yet. He had been installing a tankless water heater. He left at 7:30 AM and was still gone at 8:30 PM. I called him to tell him about the situation. He told me that he would be home right away.
I looked in a few more places. No keys. I ran downstairs. Now Isaiah's face was pressed against the glass panes on the door and he was tapping on the glass with his little fingers. He tried to open the door a couple of times, but the handle wouldn't budge. I grabbed Micah from his block building and placed him in front of the door. I didn't want Isaiah to be lonely.
Next, I opened the door to the furnace. The furnace is basically in the office closet. There was a little room around the side of the furnace, but not nearly enough room for me to fit in. There was insulation around the furnace and sharp corners. I didn't want to send the older kids that way. I glanced over at the door. Isaiah was drooling on the window and starting to whimper. Micah had wandered off somewhere. I grabbed him again and firmly told him to stay at the door and keep his brother company.
I decided to go out in the cold and try the window. It looked locked, but sometimes it won't lock all the way when the window is slightly open. As I worked on trying to remove the screen from the wrong side, Isaiah came over to the window and started to climb on top of the printer. As I was trying to get the window open, he climbed on top of the printer and leans towards the window so far that only one of his little feet remained on the printer. I was starting to worry that he was going to hurt himself and I wouldn't be able to get to him. I kept telling him to get down - he just kept whimpering and staring at me with his big, brown eyes as he was perched on one single foot.
At this point I decided to call Mark. I couldn't use the cordless phone because it was locked in the room with Isaiah, so I had to go upstairs. I grabbed Micah, who had wandered off again and put him back in front of the door. At this point, Isaiah had noticed that my laptop and a mouse were sitting on my desk. He started to climb on top of the desk. I grew even more worried.
As I dialed Mark's number, he came running in the door with a flash light. He descended into the basement and I pointed out that the only option I saw was to somehow make it through the closet. I was sure that he was going to use Christina, so I had already called her out of bed when I saw Isaiah starting to fall off the desk.
As a mom there is nothing worse that seeing your child about to fall of something when you are absolutely powerless to help. He was trying to hold onto the desk with his chunky little fingers, but there isn't a lot of traction, so he was starting to slide off the desk with his legs dangling. Right behind him was a small wooden chair at just the right angle to do damage to him. Mark saw the same scene. That was when he decided that he was going to make it no matter what.
Mark removed the insulation and started to squeeze his body between the unfinished wall and the vent shaft towards the room. He wasn't quite thin enough to fit, but he pushed himself hard and started making a moaning/grunting sound as he forced his body through the opening. Once he got past the vent shaft, I looked at Isaiah, and he was still trying to not fall off the table, but he was sliding a little bit at a time. Then, I heard an awful scraping sound and the door to the closet opened. Mark materialized and grabbed little Isaiah - who was very excited to see him. He wasn't without his battle wounds. There was a long scrape across his belly from a metal piece sticking out the side of the water heater and a red mark across his back from the light switch being shoved into his back as he squeezed by the water heater. Victory!
My personal project for tomorrow is to find the keys or get new ones made. Somehow it is supposed to be really easy to get a new key made (which kind of defeats the purpose of having keys in the first place). I am very grateful about this feature on my door hardware. I also get to reclean the office, which Isaiah made a mess of as he was climbing different surfaces. I guess it's just another day in the life of my family. Baby saved from certain doom: Check. Another injury (this time it was Mark's turn): Check. Mom needs the kids to go to bed so she can emotionally recover: Check.
My next blog is about Micah getting his fingers caught in an elevator door on Sunday. You just can't make this stuff up...
Showing posts with label Isaiah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Isaiah. Show all posts
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Survivor Part 2
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my scavenger child: Isaiah. He loves to find food and eat it - no matter how old it is. Well, he has reached an all new level.
My MOPS group had a play date at McDonalds last week. All 4 children were with me because it was fall break. (By the way, does anyone else remember fall break? I keep sending my kids to school and the school keeps inventing reasons to send them back. Sorry, I digress...) Isaiah slept while the older 3 kids were eating. When he woke up they swept him into the play structure.
I try my best to not think about what might be happening in the play structure. They are designed to let really small children in only to a point. At that point there is some type of barricade that prevents them from going further. As long as Isaiah looks desperate enough, some other child will always hoist him over the barricade and he will find his way into the part of the structure that dangles 12 feet in the air. I keep telling myself that the equipment is safe as I see him waving from a place that there is no possible way I can get to. I at least had my older 2 girls with me. Whenever one of their brothers is in distress, they are always willing to drag them kicking and screaming and throw them down the first available slide.
Well, apparently, the girls threw Isaiah down a slide and failed to tell me. I was chit chatting with some other MOPS moms when I looked over and saw Isaiah holding 2 half eaten ice cream cones, licking from them both one at a time. I was horrified. When he exited the slide, I guess he looked up and saw all of the left over food that other kids didn't finish just sitting on the tables. He felt free to help himself to whatever he could find.
One of my MOPS friends saw Isaiah and told me that the ice cream cones belonged to her kids, but he could have them. I wish I could express how embarrassing it is to have THAT child. I have the child that steals food. When I took the empty cones from him, he started casing the food tables, looking for his next tasty snack. That's when we went to visit the food counter. Now I know why he always seems to have a runny nose.
The moral of this story is: If you see Isaiah at McDonalds, and your kids want to save their food for later, then you must hide your food in a location that Isaiah cannot see. Then, it may be safe. Some children aspire to be astronauts, some aspire to be firemen. My child aspires to be a homeless person.
My MOPS group had a play date at McDonalds last week. All 4 children were with me because it was fall break. (By the way, does anyone else remember fall break? I keep sending my kids to school and the school keeps inventing reasons to send them back. Sorry, I digress...) Isaiah slept while the older 3 kids were eating. When he woke up they swept him into the play structure.
I try my best to not think about what might be happening in the play structure. They are designed to let really small children in only to a point. At that point there is some type of barricade that prevents them from going further. As long as Isaiah looks desperate enough, some other child will always hoist him over the barricade and he will find his way into the part of the structure that dangles 12 feet in the air. I keep telling myself that the equipment is safe as I see him waving from a place that there is no possible way I can get to. I at least had my older 2 girls with me. Whenever one of their brothers is in distress, they are always willing to drag them kicking and screaming and throw them down the first available slide.
Well, apparently, the girls threw Isaiah down a slide and failed to tell me. I was chit chatting with some other MOPS moms when I looked over and saw Isaiah holding 2 half eaten ice cream cones, licking from them both one at a time. I was horrified. When he exited the slide, I guess he looked up and saw all of the left over food that other kids didn't finish just sitting on the tables. He felt free to help himself to whatever he could find.
One of my MOPS friends saw Isaiah and told me that the ice cream cones belonged to her kids, but he could have them. I wish I could express how embarrassing it is to have THAT child. I have the child that steals food. When I took the empty cones from him, he started casing the food tables, looking for his next tasty snack. That's when we went to visit the food counter. Now I know why he always seems to have a runny nose.
The moral of this story is: If you see Isaiah at McDonalds, and your kids want to save their food for later, then you must hide your food in a location that Isaiah cannot see. Then, it may be safe. Some children aspire to be astronauts, some aspire to be firemen. My child aspires to be a homeless person.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Survivor
I write this post after my son's 5th call to 911. When he would call in the beginning, they would always call back to make sure that we were okay. Now they don't even care anymore. *sigh*
This post is actually about Isaiah - the ultimate survivor. If there were a show that was really about survival (and not about group dynamics like the TV show Survivor), I would totally enter Isaiah. Well, I'd enter him if there were no minimum age... I really think that if something happened to us and Isaiah was the only one left, that he could live on his own for a month or two.
You might ask why I believe that my 16 month old is the ultimate survivor. Well, let me explain...
Since Isaiah was first able to crawl, he has had an attraction to the trash can. When we first put him in his high chair, he was immediately drawn to the assortment of food that lay in the trash can. (He can see down into it from his chair.) I remember having to move the trash out of his reach at the earliest age. Then, when he was first able to crawl, one of the first places that I had to banish him from was the trash. He would sneak over to the kitchen, crawl up on the chair and see what kind of wonderful foods he could find. Our lid for the trash broke a couple of years ago, so we can't keep it covered. Isaiah likes it that way.
Isaiah never cries for food. He scavenges. The other day I heard knocking on the patio door in the basement. I walked downstairs to see what was going on, because my four kids and the neighbor were just watching a movie. Apparently, Isaiah was the one who had been knocking on the door (which is right next to the TV area). The kids, not really thinking about the fact that he's 1 year old or that that was raining, let him out into the backyard. I'm sure that if the movie wasn't so good that they would have thought twice about letting him out into a monsoon-esque rain storm. By the time I got downstairs and realized what was going on, Isaiah was knocking on the door from the outside. I opened the door, and he came toddling in the house with a half-eaten rotten apple in hand. He was as happy as can be. He proceed to sit down with the kids and eat his find.
Realizing that he was hungry (and eating a really gross looking apple), I went outside to grab him a fresh apple off of our apple tree. I took the rotten apple from his little clutches and replaced it with a perfect, fresh picked apple. He immediately threw it at me and started crying and pointing at the rotten apple. It took me a while to realized that he prefers rotten apples because they are easier to bite. Once I had this revelation, I would cut a slice out of a fresh apple. Then, he would resign to eating it.
I wish I would say that this was a solitary incident, but it is not. Mark planted a garden this year full of carrots, strawberries, and tomatoes. Isaiah doesn't like the tomatoes, but he loves everything else. He digs in the strawberries until he finds some good little morsel that he can get his hands on. If he can't find anything, then it's off to the apple tree to find another rotten apple!
Isaiah tries to be a well-rounded baby, so he doesn't limit himself to food. Last week, I was standing in the kitchen making dinner, and Isaiah walked right past me to the patio door, which was open. He walked with purpose, so out of curiosity, I watched to see where he was going.
Isaiah climbed down the deck stairs, and walked to the play house, where the kids had left a couple of plastic cups. He grabbed a cup and then turned around, walked to the stairs and climbed back up to the kitchen. Holding his cup, he walked past me again, down the hallway and into the bathroom, where he pushed the step stool up to the counter. He climbed the stool and onto the counter, where he turned on the faucet, filled his cup with water and started drinking. That's a baby that knows what he wants!
Now I just have to be more aware of Isaiah when we're out and about - I can imagine how excited he'll be about eating out of someone else's trash. At home I bury anything that has touched raw meat in the bottom of the trash - or if it is empty, I throw any dangerous items in the trash outside. Now I just have to come to terms with the fact that my kids don't need me anymore. My 16 month old doesn't even need me! Actually, now that I'm writing this, it's actually kind of liberating. Hmmm... I wonder if I can potty train a 16 month old. We already know that he can climb onto the toilet...
This post is actually about Isaiah - the ultimate survivor. If there were a show that was really about survival (and not about group dynamics like the TV show Survivor), I would totally enter Isaiah. Well, I'd enter him if there were no minimum age... I really think that if something happened to us and Isaiah was the only one left, that he could live on his own for a month or two.
You might ask why I believe that my 16 month old is the ultimate survivor. Well, let me explain...
Since Isaiah was first able to crawl, he has had an attraction to the trash can. When we first put him in his high chair, he was immediately drawn to the assortment of food that lay in the trash can. (He can see down into it from his chair.) I remember having to move the trash out of his reach at the earliest age. Then, when he was first able to crawl, one of the first places that I had to banish him from was the trash. He would sneak over to the kitchen, crawl up on the chair and see what kind of wonderful foods he could find. Our lid for the trash broke a couple of years ago, so we can't keep it covered. Isaiah likes it that way.
Isaiah never cries for food. He scavenges. The other day I heard knocking on the patio door in the basement. I walked downstairs to see what was going on, because my four kids and the neighbor were just watching a movie. Apparently, Isaiah was the one who had been knocking on the door (which is right next to the TV area). The kids, not really thinking about the fact that he's 1 year old or that that was raining, let him out into the backyard. I'm sure that if the movie wasn't so good that they would have thought twice about letting him out into a monsoon-esque rain storm. By the time I got downstairs and realized what was going on, Isaiah was knocking on the door from the outside. I opened the door, and he came toddling in the house with a half-eaten rotten apple in hand. He was as happy as can be. He proceed to sit down with the kids and eat his find.
Realizing that he was hungry (and eating a really gross looking apple), I went outside to grab him a fresh apple off of our apple tree. I took the rotten apple from his little clutches and replaced it with a perfect, fresh picked apple. He immediately threw it at me and started crying and pointing at the rotten apple. It took me a while to realized that he prefers rotten apples because they are easier to bite. Once I had this revelation, I would cut a slice out of a fresh apple. Then, he would resign to eating it.
I wish I would say that this was a solitary incident, but it is not. Mark planted a garden this year full of carrots, strawberries, and tomatoes. Isaiah doesn't like the tomatoes, but he loves everything else. He digs in the strawberries until he finds some good little morsel that he can get his hands on. If he can't find anything, then it's off to the apple tree to find another rotten apple!
Isaiah tries to be a well-rounded baby, so he doesn't limit himself to food. Last week, I was standing in the kitchen making dinner, and Isaiah walked right past me to the patio door, which was open. He walked with purpose, so out of curiosity, I watched to see where he was going.
Isaiah climbed down the deck stairs, and walked to the play house, where the kids had left a couple of plastic cups. He grabbed a cup and then turned around, walked to the stairs and climbed back up to the kitchen. Holding his cup, he walked past me again, down the hallway and into the bathroom, where he pushed the step stool up to the counter. He climbed the stool and onto the counter, where he turned on the faucet, filled his cup with water and started drinking. That's a baby that knows what he wants!
Now I just have to be more aware of Isaiah when we're out and about - I can imagine how excited he'll be about eating out of someone else's trash. At home I bury anything that has touched raw meat in the bottom of the trash - or if it is empty, I throw any dangerous items in the trash outside. Now I just have to come to terms with the fact that my kids don't need me anymore. My 16 month old doesn't even need me! Actually, now that I'm writing this, it's actually kind of liberating. Hmmm... I wonder if I can potty train a 16 month old. We already know that he can climb onto the toilet...
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