About a year ago...

It was a rainy day. Pear was mobile, crawling, and into everything! I managed to squeeze in a shower while she was napping. I then moved onto doing my household chores with Pear crawling alongside me, pulling things out of the cupboard as I put things in. I did the dishes, swept the floors and then took the garbage out. Now, taking the garbage out meant that I had to go outside and close the door, leaving Pear in. So, I explained to Pear, "Mommy is going to take the garbage out, you keep playing and I'll be right back! Okay? I'll be right back." I made sure the door wasn't locked and took the garbage out. Upon returning, I opened the door saying, "Boo! Here I am. I came right back!" Pear burst into laughter. I came in, closed the door and said, "That was pretty funny, huh?" I had a great idea, I went back outside to play peek-a-boo again. Only this time, I couldn't get the door open. What happened between the 5 seconds that I came inside to the time I went back out? I locked the door of course! Who doesn't lock the door the moment they come in the house?! (Note to reader: growing up in the little town of Montesano, we never locked the doors. We sometimes left the house with our front door wide open. The garage door remained open almost all of the time. I never carried a house key until I got married and found out that the majority of people lock doors and my husband never wanted me to leave the door unlocked. I forced myself into the habit of locking doors.) So, here I was outside on my front porch on a freezing cold day, in the pouring rain with a towel on my head and wearing shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops. No key, no phone and no idea what to do. I quickly thought I better check on Pear and make sure she was okay. So I turned the recycle bins over and peeked through the window. I saw she was playing, content on the floor. Great! This is when I had the bright idea to knock on the window and say "peek-a-boo" as to make it into a game that I was stuck outside and she was in. Not a great idea. After doing this a couple of times, my 10 month old got the idea that for some reason I wasn't coming inside the house. She didn't like the idea and began crying. I then figured I must think of another plan. I'll go use the neighbors phone and get Stephen to come unlock the door. I ran to the neighbors house- shorts, T-shirt, flip-flops, wet head, in the rain and in the cold! I explained the situation in about 10 seconds, called Stephen, ran out of their door with a "thank you!" and stood on the recycle bin watching Pear play while waiting for Stephen to come unlock the door. He arrived within 15 minutes. He speedily unlocked the door and we all lived happily ever after!