How I lost my kids

Last Tuesday evening I had the panic of my life.  Camden and Audrey disappeared.  But in order to understand how this event transpired, I have to back up to earlier in the day and tell about what happened then.

I picked up Camden from Kindergarten.  I walked down with Patrick and brought Camden's scooter to him to ride home.  Usually when this happens, Camden gets frustrated on the way home because he always has to go to the bathroom and wants to ride his scooter home fast so that he can.  Patrick is a typical 2-year old and takes his time on the way home and this is what frustrates Camden.  If Camden does race home fast, he can't get in the house because it is locked.  So on this particular day, I brought the keys and gave them to Camden.  He put them in his pocket and started to rush home.

Not too far along our way, Camden just couldn't hold it anymore.  So he went off into some bushes and went to the bathroom.  Then he raced home.  Once Patrick and I were getting into the neighborhood, Camden was coming back to us.  He said he had lost the keys somewhere and couldn't get in the house.  He showed me that his pockets were empty.  Since I had walked behind him and never saw the keys on the sidewalk, I figured that they fell out of his pocket when he went to the bathroom in the bushes.  I told him that since I soon had to pick up Audrey from preschool that I didn't have time to walk all the way back down to the school to find them and that I would go home and get my bike (with the trailer) and ride down there to look for them.  I lost my other set of car keys a couple of weeks ago, so this was my only set.  Riding my bike was the only option.  I asked Camden to stay put and I would be right back with my bike.

A minute or so after reaching my house, I get a call from some lady who has Camden.  She said she saw him out on Bilby which is the road just outside our neighborhood that goes to the school.  She wanted to make sure that I knew he was out because she felt he was still pretty young to be out on a busy road by himself.  I told her that I knew he was out, but he wasn't supposed to be on Bilby, he was supposed to be waiting for me in the neighborhood where I had last seen him.  She said that she was walking back with him.  I met up with him, he got in the bike trailer, and we rode down Bilby.  I saw that the lady's car was parked about half-way down Bilby.  She apparently saw him and pulled over, approached him, and he went with her!!  I am so glad that he didn't get into her car, and we had a big talk about strangers after that.  Not that we have never had that talk, but it was definitely time to have it again!

Fast forward a few hours and that same evening I was in the backyard weeding the garden.  The kids were playing in the yard on their swing set.  After a few minutes, I noticed it was pretty quiet and realized the kids had gone inside.  I heard the sound of the door beeping, so I knew I needed to go round them up before they started playing in the street in the front yard.  I went inside and called their names.  Nothing.  The house was silent.

I headed to the front door since I had heard it beeping.  I opened it and found Patrick standing on the doorstep in just his shirt and diaper.  My next door neighbor was just taking her dog out for a walk and when she saw me said she was just going to knock on the door to see if I knew that Patrick was out.  I said I suspected it, but I didn't know where the other two were.  At the end of the street another neighbor's parrot was squawking like crazy.  My kids often will run down there to talk to the parrot.  I figured that's where they were.  Patrick and I ran down there, but nothing.  A few houses down from that lives our friends where my kids play a lot.  Last time they ran away from me, that is where they went.  I knocked on the Scanlans door.  Not there.  I was perplexed where else would they go?  Kami Scanlan went looking on the street next to mine and then over to the park and I returned home to check the house again and set out with my car.  Aaron wasn't home, so if they had gone home I wouldn't have known it.

I went back home.  The house was still dark and silent.  I went up the stairs and yelled their names.  Nothing.  So  I got in the car and drove to the park and around a few more streets.  They were nowhere.  Then I remembered Camden's little adventure down Bilby St. earlier in the day and feared that he decided to take Audrey on a similar adventure.  I sent out a quick text to all my neighborhood friends asking them to take a minute to check their streets.  Everyone did and suddenly I had a neighborhood search party!  I drove down Bilby to the school.  Nothing.  Dark was setting in.  It had been about 20 or 30 minutes and I was starting to panic and knew that pretty soon I would need to call the police.  Our neighborhood has no street lights and there are often coyotes and rattlesnakes around.  Not to mention that apparently my child goes with strangers.

I called Bailey, the gal who babysits my kids often, and asked her if she would wait at the house.  Suddenly I remembered that I never checked with the friends across the street from me.  I knocked on their door and asked, but no, they weren't there.  As I faced my house, I saw a light on.  It was dark by this time and I am not sure if the light was on before, but I could see it then.  So I ran in the house and up the stairs screaming their names.  Nothing.  Silence.  I thought it was probably the light in my closet that I had left on.  I jumped back in the car and kept looking.  I couldn't stop thinking about the light on that I saw.  I called Bailey and asked her if she would look in closets and under beds as I had not done that.

I frantically kept driving around the neighborhood.  I passed many friends and neighbors who were out with flashlights.  One neighbor was on his 4-Wheeler checking the washes and parks.  My phone rang.  It was Bailey.  She found the kids!  They were in Audrey's room watching TV on my tablet.  The locks are reversed on the kids' bedroom doors and they had locked themselves in the room to watch Netflix on my tablet.  They were oblivious to everything! I asked them why they never answered me.  They said they didn't hear me.  My neighbor across the street responded that she heard me from across the street!  They were just tuned out to the world, watching TV.  I asked the kids how the door got locked and Camden said that he did it so that Patrick wouldn't follow them in.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  That was one of the longest 30 minutes of my life!!!  I feel really silly that they were in their room the whole time.  I thought I had checked, but I never actually opened doors because it was so quiet and dark and they never answered.  Plus with Patrick being out front saying he was looking for the kids, and with the incident earlier in the day, I never thought for a second that they were in a room watching TV.  Especially because they are not supposed to have computers/TVs in rooms!  My neighbors were all so amazing to help, and as one of them put it, it was a good drill. :)  I