I'm no MacGyver, but neither were the firemen...

Last night, Aaron left Houston to go home for first grade on Monday. He was completely excited and even made a countdown calendar, crossing off each day until school starts.  I on the other hand, am still sad.  This is obviously not how I wanted to spend Aaron's first day of first grade-- far, far away in a radiation treatment center.  I truly need a clone.  Thankfully, John was able to go with him.  Aaron will stay with my parents for three weeks while we finish up here.  I will miss him.  I miss John, and he is only going to be gone until Tuesday. 

Anyway, after John's mom and I returned home from the airport and put the kids to bed, I went back to check on Andrew and couldn't get into the bedroom.  It was locked.  I'm not sure how.  Did I do it?  Had Andrew locked it?  I don't know, but it was locked.  And in my frantic search above these foreign bedroom doors, I discovered there was NO key.

John's mom and I immediately went to work, bending paperclips, untwisting hangers, taking apart my hair barrettes, trying to find anything that would unlock the tiny little mechanism inside the doorknob.  We were pathetic MacGyvers...none of our attempts helped at all....and all of my apartment emergency numbers, and my cell phone, were locked in the room with Andrew.  No one was answering the phone at the apartment complex.  No neighbors were home...and honestly I was cautious to try too many of their doors, it was 10 pm on Saturday night.

John's mom was trying to keep Andrew from crying by passing him pieces of cereal under the door (actually quite humorous...we could hear the cries interrupted by crunching). She was also passing  him pictures of the door knob, complete with arrows, trying to show him what to turn...this was also fairly humorous...but it wasn't working!

In comes the Fire Department. We were desperate.  I felt stupid to call them, but Andrew was getting more and more upset and we couldn't get the door open!  I was hoping they might have a "not-such-an-emergency vehicle"...you know the one they send when they rescue cats from trees...but not so.  Here comes the HUGE firetruck, lights flashing, siren squealing--  for me, and my little son locked in a bedroom.  Three big men hop out with a HUGE AXE.  I was thinking a tiny screw driver might be best...

And they tried the same tricks...untwisting hangers, searching through swiss army knife gadgets...none of them worked.  I feared we were getting closer and closer to that HUGE Axe being used and imagining the HUGE repair bill that would follow.

So the Firemen tried talking to him.  "Please open the door Andrew."  "I can't" he said.  After many attempts at bolstering his confidence, and telling him how big he was, and how he "could do it."  He was told WHO was on the other side of the door.   He was told that if he opened the door, he could see firemen and have some candy.  And somewhere, from the depth of his being, he summoned the ability to turn the knob,  open the door, and spare us all from THAT AXE. :)  Hooray for Andrew! 

But alas, that was not the end to my evening.  I finished off the night at 1:30 am with a panicked search through my computer for photo files that I inadvertantly deleted. Thankfully they hadn't made it any further than the recycling bin, but for a while there, my heart was racing.

What a crazy night!!  And all I wanted to do was sit and relax with a good book.