Last night was kind of terrifying.
McKay and I had just put Tyler and Jamie down to sleep, and we were in our room working on various things (me, homework, McKay, Angry Birds), when I thought I heard a door creak open somewhere in the house. I didn't think too much of it, and I asked McKay if he had heard anything. He said no, but he stood up and walked towards the bedroom door to go check it out.
Before he reached the door, we heard quick footsteps running down the hall, away from the bedrooms.
Tyler never, ever gets out of bed after we put him down, so you can understand the panic we felt.
McKay grabbed a big polka dot umbrella, and I grabbed some curtain rods, and we hovered in our doorway, hearts in our throats, hands shaking, torn between grabbing our babies and hiding from whatever or whoever was in our house, and charging down the hallway with our makeshift weapons. McKay yelled a few times down the hall to the rest of the darkened house. I became very aware of the fact that all our hallway light switches were where the footsteps had gone towards, along with our cell phones, knives, hammers, and anything else that might have been more useful than a $5 Walmart umbrella against a robber, and why oh why did we move so close to downtown?
As we stood frozen in the doorway, Tyler peeked his head out of his bedroom across the hall to see what was going on. I snatched him up and pulled him behind me.
"Momma?"
"Tyler, shhh."
"Momma, I gotta go potty."
"Shhh, Tyler...wait, what? You have to go potty?"
"Yeah, I get out of bed, I go potty."
"Tyler, did you just get out of bed to go potty, and then run back into your bed?"
"Yeah, I run back into my bed."
All the tension and adrenaline just whooshed out of us as we realized what had happened. Tyler had, in fact, gotten out of his bed, cracked open his door, and then ran back into bed when he heard us coming. (The raised foundation of our home plus the hardwood floors makes it hard to tell exactly where the footsteps are coming from.)
Rest assured, we did still search the rest of the house, just in case. And Tyler trotted happily off to the bathroom. I spent the rest of the night researching the best way to handle break ins, and I am happy to report I learned nothing useful but I am now freaked out of my mind.
