In an ongoing effort to be named "Mother of the Year" I locked my kids in the car yesterday. Yes, my kids AND my keys. We had just finished playing at the park with Isaiah's pal Hank and we were loading up the car and heading out to get lunch. Everything was loaded up and I closed Isaiah's door and headed around to my door, realizing that I didn't have my keys. I usually rest my keys in the side of Isaiah's seat while I buckle him in. I went back around to get them and LO and BEHOLD the door was locked! ALL of them were locked! It happened so fast, I didn't even know how/when this could have happened. Isaiah must have leaned against the keys pushing the lock button. Panic started to set in, and I told my friend Libby, "OMG, I think I locked my kids in the car!" She told me to go to the park and ask any of the other moms if they had triple A. One of the moms at the park told me to call the fire dept. that they would come much faster than triple A. So Libby got on the phone and I tried to get Isaiah to unbuckle himself and unlock the door. We were making a little bit of progress until he got his arm stuck in the strap. Then he started to panic and cry. That's when Libby took over and tried to talk to him so he would calm down and I got on the phone with the sheriff's dept.
After getting off the phone, I realized the keys were right next to Isaiah's leg and we spent the next 5 minutes trying to get him to pick up the keys. Here we were, two moms with our faces pressed up to my dirty tinted windows talking loudly and acting out motions with our hands. Libby did most of the talking to Isaiah, as she didn't want him to see his mother panicky and in turn make him freak out. He did get very frustrated a few times and would scream, kick and cryl My poor baby boy. I knew he was terrified. I just wanted to break the window. I couldn't believe what I had done. My two precious babies locked in the car. I thanked God that it wasn't a hot day. Isaiah finally picked up the keys and had them in his hands. Then we tried to get him to push the unlock button. I swear he pushed every other button on my key ring (the house alarm buttons too). He actually had his finger on the unlock button at one point and we were so frustrated because we couldn't get him to push it hard enough! He was screaming and crying and Lily was crying too. Then he dropped the keys. So any hope of him unlocking the car was over.
The firemen arrived quickly, faster than triple A would have ever been able to come. I briefly turned around to look at the playground and I swear, every single kid and parent were lined up staring with their faces in the fence. NICE. I will forever be that mom that locked her kids in the car. The firefighters pulled up in their red fire truck and opened up their tool compartment. My first thought when seeing the axes and sledge hammers was that they would have to break a window. But they assured me that they would try everything they could not to have to damage the car in any way. They were so great, so friendly, SO MY HEROS! They went to work with their tools and after about 10 minutes I heard the beautiful sound of my car alarm going off! Lily had fallen asleep, so I grabbed my sweet boy who was sweating from head to toe! We took off his sweatshirt and the friendly firemen gave Isaiah and Hank (who was waiting patiently this whole time) a little firehat. I love firefighters even more than I ever did! Also, Libby is my new Hero Mom! I would have been such a mess without her! This whole ordeal from start to finish was about 20 minutes. But it seemed like HOURS (and years off my life)!
Driving in the car on our way to lunch, (yes we still went) Isaiah told me, "Mommy that was a scary day." I tried to spin it into a positive light and said, "Yeah, what an adventure... we were rescued by firefighters." But then he said it again, "Mommy, we had a scary day."
I plan on baking cookies and bringing them to the firehouse with Isaiah... except that I have no idea of which of the 5 local firehouses the crew came from...
