Note to self...
Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 09:25AM ...just because your first two children were pretty easy (notwithstanding injury, lol), don't assume the third will be. ;)
Yes, this is the post where I'll explain how I lost Micah. ;)
Those of you who know me, know I like to joke that, with Micah, I finally got a "boy." Not that Noah and Asher don't enjoy blowing things up or pretend sword playing and all that...it's just that Micah was my first kid who climbed on counters and ran in the middle of the street and didn't worry when he couldn't find me in a store...know what I mean?
Anyhow, he's been really reminding us lately that we mustn't become complacent in this whole parenting thing. Case in point...a couple weeks ago, we were all coming home from the neighborhood park. Micah and I had driven and Nathan, Noah and Asher were walking. (Noah and I had met them at the park, returning from being out for the day.) On the way home, Micah got miffed at me over my dinner plans for the evening (to go out without him while our neighbor watched them, lol). He stayed in the front yard to mope and wait for the other three. I let him mope...it's usually best to let him be at times like that. When I went to look for him shortly thereafter, though, I could not find the boy. I figured he was hiding and moping still (he does that). I wasn't overly worried. Then, Nathan, Noah and Asher got home and I still couldn't find the boy. Started calling for him and set the other two to looking for him as well. Nathan grabbed his bike and went out to search and I was in the process of gathering the other two to get in the van and go looking...when, thankfully, Micah came strolling back to the house.
He'd taken off and gotten a few blocks away before realizing that Nathan must have taken a different route to walk home...and turned around, himself, to come home. (Fortunately, he knew where he was and how to get home and all that and hadn't crossed any main streets. We actually do walk around the neighborhood quite a bit.)
Needless to say, Micah got a good talking to about how he should freakin' know that the rule is that he's not to go anywhere alone and that, even if walking someplace with a brother, he's supposed to tell me first. Makes sense, right? Oy.
Anyhow, given that he's six (which we sometimes forget) and that this was somewhat of a first offense and we figured he'd scared himself enough to remember, we let him off with a warning (and a lot of reminders about *why* we have the rules we have).
All good, right? Wrong.
Just last week (not two weeks after the above incident), the boy got away from us again when we'd all biked to a different park. Not as far away...we could still see him. But. He'd neglected to tell us he was going someplace other than he'd originally set out for, and he'd gone alone. Oh. And did I mention that the place he'd gone was to walk along the railroad tracks?! OY! Not five minutes before that, I'd mentioned to the boys (all three of them) that obviously the FENCE was there to keep us away from the tracks. What did Micah do? He found a spot and went under the dang fence.
Yup. Awesome. It was the other two boys who alerted us to the fact that Micah was up there (we thought he was just beyond a bush, where he'd said he was going to check out one of those exercise station type things). Nathan managed to collect the boy (thankfully, Nathan was with us, as I couldn't have easily gotten over that fence). And...not ten minutes after Nathan got everyone back on the proper side of the fence:
;)
Yeah. Train. Great. (I asked Noah, btw, whether he knew that it wasn't safe to walk on railroad tracks. He looked at me incredulously. I asked whether I'd had to *tell* him that and he said no. Apparently I need to be much more specific with Micah.) Sigh.
So. I feel like I've aged about 10 years in the past couple weeks. Fortunately, both incidents turned out okay (and also, fortunately, my hair was recently colored so you can't see the gazillion white hairs that I'm sure I grew just this month, lol). Here's hoping for a very uneventful April...
Reader Comments (2)
Micah is surely an adorable challenge child!
You're such an awesome mom!
Although I have a boy and girl- I am starting to notice differences and similarities between them both and learning how to approach each child differently.
And, yeah- sometimes they are lucky they are so cute!