Deadbolts & Meltdowns

This morning my daughter, Elyse & I woke up with big plans for a big breakfast.

As always, she struts out of her room with wild hair & her pajamas nowhere in sight. I could dress her in footie pajamas backwards & she would still find a way to get them off before morning. I gave up brainstorming how she does it.

We head down the stairs to get breakfast going. Scrambled eggs with diced green peppers, banana bread English muffins with honey butter, smoky links, & a banana/peach smoothie. Yum! Today she even had the opportunity to scramble up the eggs all by herself.

After our weekend breakfasts, Elyse likes to dress herself. This morning I laid out her clothes options on the coffee table & headed out to my attached garage. My son's birthday is near & I decided to gift him a power wheels vehicle. The 12 volt battery needs to be charged before use so I thought it would be a perfect time to hook that up to the charger while Elyse is dressing.

Wrong. So wrong.

Because I too was still roaming around in what I went to bed in, all I had was a long sleeved t-shirt & knit leggings. I thought nothing of leaving my phone or bra inside because it wasn't like I was leaving my house & I wasn't going to be longer than 5 minutes. So here I am venturing off to the garage with nothing but my pajamas.

I am a locker. I deadbolt my doors at all times. I have 3 doors that lead to the outside. The front door was dead-bolted. The side door was dead bolted. It wasn't but a couple minutes after entering the garage that I heard the third & final deadbolt lock.

A couple seconds crawl by & that's when it dawned on me. My shy of 2 years old daughter just locked me out of the house. *GULP*

"Keep it together, Lindsey." I told myself.

I don't panic. I do just the opposite. I walk calmly up the steps to the door & I'm thanking God that there are window panes at the top so I can see what's going on in the kitchen where my daughter is blankly staring at the door...alone.

In my sweetest voice I say: "Lysy, unlock the door, baby." Because panicking would send her straight off the cliff. I knew I could not let her know what she just did.

She doesn't understand. She attempts to open the door & then the tears. All of them. Buckets of tears & a full melt down. She has just realized what I was hoping she wouldn't. I so needed her to remain calm & work with me. I knew this was going to go south very quickly.

She's on the floor crying in nothing but a diaper. I'm outside in the garage with nothing to pick the lock with, nothing to call with, & over my dead body am I marching over to my 84 year old neighbor's house without my bra.

"Keep it together...." I think to myself as I pace the length of the garage trying to think of something...anything.

I try again.

I peek through the window panes to see my tot still on the ground crying.

I have got to talk her through this somehow.

"Elyse, get up. Do you want a treat?"

Genius. Why didn't I think of this in the first place? You can change her mood instantly with a snack.

Tears disappear. "Yup!"

"Okay. You've got to let me in then. Grab the chair...Okay...push it over here by the door..." I say through the glass.

"Kaaay." She says cheerfully.

She climbs up.

"Okay. Flick the knob over."

*click*

Have you ever tried to team work with a tot?

I have. Whew!