Panic

At the risk of sounding like a terrible mother, I'm going to relate the following story...

Last night Chase and I went on a Valentine's day date with some friends. I was in charge of dropping Livia off at her cousin's house, and Chase was going to meet me at the restaurant because it was halfway in between our house and his work. As usual, I was running late. And, as usual, Livia was being very uncooperative. My arms loaded down with a diaper bag, purse, blankies, and a change of clothes for Chase, I decided to run all that out to the car and come back for Livia, who was dawdling and wouldn't put on her shoes.

A minute later I'm back at the front door....and the door is dead-bolted shut.

I have no house keys, no phone.

And panic sets in.

"Livia?? Can you open the door?" I call, trying not to sound as concerned as I feel, and knowing full well that our neighbors in the apartment next door can hear everything that's going on.

"Okay Mom"

...nothing....

"Livia?? Come open the door."

"Okay Mom, I will," but she sounds distinctly farther away than she was before.

"Livia! Please come open the door!"

A minute passes by....

And then the handle starts to jiggle!

"Good! Okay, it's the one on top, Livia. Unlock the one on top. No, the higher one. The one you locked!"

It took a few minutes of coaching, because Livia has never messed with the dead bolt before. She can reach it easily, but locks are just something that have never interested her (until last night, apparently), and so she didn't know exactly how to unlock it. But finally the door opened, and oh my goodness was I relieved!

Wouldn't that have been fun to explain to the managers...."Um, my two year old locked me out. Yeah, she's all alone in there."

Nice.