When James was born, Maisy was four and Wyatt was three. This made for a perfect storm of, “What is my life?” James was a sweet baby, still is a sweet young man and wanted to be held all of the time. This was okay, except I had a three- and four-year-old running amuck.
Most of the time I could sit on our enclosed porch and watch the big two, Maisy and Wyatt, play outside from the safety of the inside. They would get all their energy out, mostly just fight to the death, in the yard, while I snuggled and fed James inside. This worked out a lot of the time ... but sometimes, not so much.
One particular sunny day, the two of them had gotten into a knock-down drag-out fight in the yard that resulted in Maisy smacking Wyatt with a stick as hard as she could. So, I sent her inside and upstairs to her room. Maisy absolutely hated being sent to her room. I wouldn’t let her do arts and crafts in her room, so I might as well of sentenced her to life with no parole.
She stomped inside, going by me and dropping a couple “I hate you, you’re the worst mom ever” chants under her breath, and went to her room. Wyatt was outside for about 15 minutes trying to have fun all by his lonesome, when all of a sudden he came inside. His little three-year-old self walked up to me and said, “I’m bored. I’m going to go to my room.”
Normally, this would have made alarm bells go off in my head. Those kids never wanted to go to their rooms. However, James was asleep, and I was thinking, "Oh my, I'm going to get some peace and quiet."
That was just dumb.
I was also kind of a new mom, so I wasn’t clued in on all the little kid “up to no good” warning signs yet.
Before I go on with this story, I should probably tell you what our home in Illinois looked like. It was a two story house with a wrap around porch. Although you weren’t supposed to ever go on the roof of the wrap around porch, you could access it from the second story of the house by simply opening the windows of the children’s bedrooms and crawling out onto the roof.
Neat, right?
So, here I am, downstairs enjoying the peace and quiet, when I hear something that sounds like footsteps over my head. “Huh, that’s weird. That sounds like someone is walking on the ... ” and I stopped mid-thought. I hastily laid James down in the bassinet that I had wwbrought out onto the enclosed porch, and started rushing, but not rushing, to the stairs that led to the second story of the house.
Right as I started to make my climb, the phone rang. “Gah! I don’t have time to answer the phone right now!” I thought, but I answered it anyway since it was cordless. In a whisper I said, “Hello,” while climbing the stairs.
“Yes, Kelly? It’s your neighbor across the street. Did you know your kids were on the roof of your house?”
“You know, I did not know until about a moment ago, and I’m on my way up there to get them off of it now. Thanks for calling! Bye!” I hung up. I hung up a little hastily, but the kids were on the roof!
I walked as quietly as I could up those creaky steps. I was so afraid that if I was loud, I would scare them and they would fall off the roof.
As I got to the landing of the steps, I heard them talking on the roof. I’m not sure what they were saying, but I heard their chatter. “Maisy and Wyatt, I have snacks for you. Why don’t you come downstairs,” I said hoping to lure them in with food.
That’s when I heard them, “Oh! If Mom finds us we’re dead!”
I heard the two of them scurrying through the windows right as I rounded the corner of the bedroom, and once the windows were shut, I started yelling.
“What in the world were you two doing? You could have died! You’re lucky you’re alive, but at the same time I’m pretty sure I want to kill you.”
I cussed a blue streak. I made up curse words. It was the first horrific scare I had as a parent. Pure terror. They stood there, open mouthed and wide eyed. Shocked at the words that were pouring out of their mother’s mouth.
Once I was finished, I hugged them both, grounded them forever (they’re still grounded by the way), and hugged them fiercely.
We also put new windows in with really tough sliding locks that they couldn’t maneuver, and made sure we moved out of there before they became even sneakier teenagers.