It's 8 a.m.; Do You Know Where Your Toddler Is?

My husband and I slept until 8 a.m. this Saturday.  It was a blissful experience.  Not since we started having children 9 years 5 months and 6 days ago (but who's counting?) have both of us been able to sleep past about 5:30 or 6:00 a.m.  It was a moment to be savored.

Unfortunately, it was the telephone which woke us.  Telephone calls at 8 a.m on a Saturday morning are rarely good news.

"Hi!  This is (our new next door neighbor, also Americans from the Embassy.  They have a daughter Benjamin's age.).  My husband saw Benjamin wandering around outside this morning and brought him home.  He's been here about an hour.  Is it alright if we feed him breakfast?"

WHAT?!?!

As you might expect, this little tidbit of news rocketed me right into full wakefulness.  After I had apologized that Benjamin had escaped, thanked her profusely for taking care of him, and clawed my way down from the ceiling, I asked myself:  How did this happen?  Did we forget to put the chain on (a chain which, I might add, my six-foot-tall self has to reach UP to unlock)?  Was the door somehow unlocked?  Where had we gone wrong?  How could he have escaped?

He's a Jedi knight, that's how he escaped:  he took his toy light saber, extended it to its full length, and -- without the slightest bit of trouble -- flicked the chain right out of its track.

The fact of his escape also explains how we were able to sleep in so late:  No Benjamin = no noise, no screaming, no crashing thuds or minor earthquakes, no one jumping on our heads = sleep.

This episode was not nearly as serious as it could have been:  we live in a tiny, gated community in which we know almost all of our neighbors.  The night guard is extremely trustworthy and knows Benjamin and knows where he belongs.  Approximately every 30 minutes guards from the Embassy come up to our house to make a visual inspection of our home and the condominio.  Short of tripping, falling, and knocking a tooth out, there's not much trouble Benjamin can get into here.  But doesn't it make your blood run cold just the same to think of a 4-year-old roaming the world alone in his pajamas?  My blood is frozen solid.

We went out that very afternoon and purchased a lock.  And now at night, every night (and sometimes during the day), we bolt the door, put the chain on, and lock the chain to itself so it can't be removed without a key, which I keep up so high even lightsaber boy can't reach it and so well hidden I can't find it most of the time.

We're also putting in a request to the Embassy to have a deadbolt-with-key installed and we're going to start using our malfunctioning-and-the-Embassy-has-no-idea-how-to-repair-it alarm which goes off right by my husband's head whenever the door is opened:  I'd much rather be woken up at 2 a.m. to a mechanical voice stating "Zone 5 in alarm" than at 8 a.m. by a kind neighbor on the telephone.