For Shannon

I was talking to Shannon last night and she was admonishing me for my lack of videos on this blog. It was finally cool enough for the kids to play outside tonight (only about 108), so I took a quick video of them playing in our backyard. We had a bit of a scare...Grace asked if she could play outside for a bit. Since she was standing stark naked I told her she could go outside once she got her pj's on. She got dressed and out she went (I had just done a safety check of the yard 5 minutes earlier). I checked on Noah who was playing in his room and decided to mop up a spilled drink off of the floor. In my mind I was thinking "this is great! finally Grace is entertaining herself and I can get a few things done!" After mopping up the drink which took about one minute I stood up and decided to open the blinds on all of the windows so that I could watch Grace play while I picked up. I opened one blind...no Grace. I opened the second, and third, and ran to the front door where I saw the front gate wide open. I raced outside, noticed Noah's car on the ground as I ran (he must have opened the front door by himself while I was mopping up the juice) mentally did the math and realized that he must be out here with Grace, and now they were out of our yard. I think I now understand the phenomenon of mothers lifting cars off of their infants, the rush of adrenaline that instantly hit me was huge! As I rounded the corner I saw my two kiddos toddling down the sidewalk. Luckily Grace has a healthy fear of cars and the street, and she was herding Noah, telling him to stay on the sidewalk. I rushed up to them and said, "Grace! What were you thinking!?!" She said "Noah and I wanted to go for a walk." And in her mind it was as simple as that. So.....we now have a new rule for playing outside, no one opens the gate except Mama...and I will be installing a new, much higher latch tomorrow!