my scariest moment yet.

Ben finished the fence Saturday and that evening I have my first parenting panic attack.

Thanks to Corey and our awesome stroller I walk to church as often as we can, it's only about 15 minutes and the kids love it. We were getting ready to leave for vespers and I told Joachim to go out to the carport and get in the stroller, Anna was already buckled and I'd run back in the house to get something for her. When I got back out, Joachim wasn't in the stroller. I called in the back yard and then in the front and he didn't answer. I was a bit worried, but mostly annoyed, I went back in the house and looked in all of the rooms calling him, but no Joachim.

Worried, I went back outside and walked all the way around the fence looking for him down the alley and around the baptist church.

He had NEVER disappeared like this and he always came when I called him. I started to think, ok this is Delta, I've never heard of a kidnapping, so he's probably not far, I just have to find him. The problem was I'd also recently talked to my neighbor and learned that fifteen years ago her 6 year old son had been hit and killed by a drunk driver who drove up on the sidewalk (they lived two blocks off of Main St. then).

I started imagining my son somewhere nearby unconscious which is why he wasn't answering my yelling. I called Grandma and asked her to come right away to help me look, (Ben was running an errand in another town). I kept walking around and around our house and down the alley calling him. None of our neighbors were home or in their yards because I'm sure they would have stopped to help.

I went back out to the sidewalk and there he was walking back from the end of the block with hands full of rocks and sticks. Before I could say anything he called to me, "I didn't go in the street. I just had to get these pretty rocks." Upon further probing I put together that he had walked to the other end of the block on his way to church and was waiting for ME to come. When I didn't come and he heard me calling he decided to come home. He just thought he'd get a head start and I'd catch up. I was literally sick the rest of the evening, and we've had many conversations with him since about wandering off and where he is and isn't allowed to go by himself.

I'm glad the fence is complete, but it's only around the backyard, which I can't really see from inside the house and he still prefers playing in the front (there's more going on in the neighborhood). Actually, I know everyone on our block has a pretty big backyard, but I've noticed we all spend a fair amount of time in our front yards playing or just sitting on the stoop. I like that. At least by spring he'll be 4 and I'm hoping less prone to absentmindedly take a stroll.

The 6 or 7 minutes he was missing was a strange mix of feeling like an awful parent and realizing nothing is really in my control because anything can happen at any moment, like my neighbor's son who was hit on his own sidewalk in front of his house.