Trapped

Saturday morning Gabe trapped himself in his bedroom.

It was actually a little amusing once his crying stopped and my heart rate slowed down.  Here's what happened:

I was in the bathroom doing my makeup and Gabe was hanging out with me while Bret washed the car.  (I assume the rest of you that live in western Washington are now asking yourselves why Bret was washing the car, since it's been raining nonstop for the past week (or longer??).  I'm sorry to say that I can't answer that question for you.  We were driving back from getting Gabe's picture taken with Santa on Friday afternoon and Bret announced that my car was "ridiculously filthy" and that he'd be washing it before we left the house to do errands on Saturday.  It makes no sense to me why he'd want to wash my car in the rain, but then again I've gone for months and months without washing my car.  Quite possibly years, in fact!)  So I'm at the bathroom mirror getting ready, and Gabe is toddling back and forth between the bathroom and his bedroom across the hall.  And since our house is the size of a shoebox (oh alright, I'm exaggerating; it's really the size of a large shoebox), Gabe was at most about 6 feet away from me. 

Except that his bedroom door was between us, and lately he's decided he likes to close doors.  So he's playing in his room and chattering and I'm putting on mascara, and then I hear his door close.  My immediate thought is "thank goodness I moved the ironing board from behind his door".  We used to keep it there but moved it when he started crawling.  My next thought was picturing what's still behind the door, which is this:

A set of wall shelves that we got for our wedding but haven't decided where to put up yet (yes, we got married 3 1/2 years ago...what's your point?) because of our lack of wall space (see previous comment about our shoebox house).  I used to have the box of shelves standing up on end, but again due to the Gabe crawling factor, I decided I needed to change that.  And lo and behold, the box of shelves fits perfectly in the space between the door on the right and the bookshelf on the left.  A storage dream!  And see how the box of shelves is almost the exact width of the molding, allowing the door to open fully without the box getting in the way?  You can guess that I was quite pleased with this serendipitous development.

But I digress.

So Gabe shut his door and I wasn't too worried about it, and after about 15 seconds I went to open the door.  And it would only open about 5 inches.  I pushed harder, it opened a bit wider, but it was still blocked.  And there's Gabe at the opening looking at me like "what's the problem, Mom?".  I had those first moments of panic; the kind where you immediately jump to "MY CHILD IS TRAPPED I CAN'T GET HIM OUT WHAT AM I GOING TO DOOOOOO?" but then I realized that things were not as dire as my maternal panic instincts had made them out to be, and after reaching around the door to see if I could feel anything (which I couldn't), I grabbed the hand mirror from the bathroom to figure out what was blocking the door. 

And yes, I was quite proud of myself for such a logical response.  It may not seem like a big deal to those of you that are of the more laid-back variety, or have a few more years of parenting under your belt, but I don't really consider myself to be the type that's calm under pressure.  So, thinking to get a mirror and find out what was causing the problem was a minor triumph for me.

I saw that the box of shelves was pulled out from the wall and wedged (remember how it fit so perfectly between the door and the bookshelf?) so that the door wouldn't swing open.  Ok, no problem...I'll just find something to push the box back into place and voila!, the door will once again be free to go about its business.  A broom handle seemed like the perfect tool for the job, so I tell Gabe that I'll be right back and run downstairs to get the broom.  Halfway down the stairs Gabe starts crying and by the time I reach the broom in the kitchen he is SCREAMING.  My maternal panic instincts were once again on high alert and when I got back to him, literally 10 seconds later, he was attemping to shove himself through the 5 inch door opening.  So between my mad dash downstairs and my heart squeezing at my screaming baby trying to free himself, I was slightly anxious...and then I had to push Gabe back into his room so I could get the broom handle in there to try to move the box. 

Oh jeez.

After a couple of tries I realized it was wedged pretty good and Gabe was still crying - so I pushed at the door again and felt it give a bit more against the cardboard of the box, making a space wide enough to pull Gabe through.  After a good long hug he settled down and my heart rate began to slow, so I moved back to the task of getting his door open.  In the end, I pushed aside the changing table that's right inside the door (thank goodness it's a lightweight piece of furniture on wheels that we decided to put there), pushed hard on the door and squeezed into the room.  I expected to hear wood cracking at the hinges but never did, so that was good news...I would have hated to announce to Bret when he got back inside from car washing in the rain that his next activity needed to be door repair. 

Once inside the room, I tried to figure out how Gabe had done it.  I put the box back the way it had been in its perfect spot, and Gabe came right in, closed the door, and moved the box so it blocked the door again.  As if he had completely forgotten the trauma (if his screaming was any indication) of moments before, or perhaps just wasn't as concerned about it now that I was in the room with him.

To document the event for the memory books, Gabe and I went to get the camera and took pictures of a re-enactment:

"Hey look!  I can turn this box over on to its side!  Cool!"

 

"Oh, hi Mommy!  <sheepish expression>  I turned the box over onto its side.  ...But I guess you probably remember that from a few minutes ago, huh?"



Shutting the door (I really think this kid has a future as a re-enactment actor...he went right from tipping the box over to shutting the door with just a small pause in the middle to let his #1 fan take a picture.  I definitely see an Emmy in his future.)




Trying to open the door wider to get out.  This is when he started fussing again because he couldn't open the door any wider, and I decided to stop the re-enactment lest I add to his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the event.

  

Still smiling after our eventful morning (well, I am...Gabe was taking it under consideration).

After the photo session, our next activity was to find a different place to store that box of shelves!