Adventures with Lydia

Lydia (like most children), is very curious, and very good at finding her way into little fixes. Sometimes these incidents are amusing, sometimes they are irritating, and sometimes they make me count my blessings. I am going to share two of our adventures of late, more for me than anything else.

Adventure #1
Our first one happened in January. This one would fit in the irritating category, although now I can laugh about it. I was trying to get my kids dressed so that we would be ready to leave soon after I got the phone call that I was waiting for. Once they were ready, we were lounging in the girls bedroom when the phone rang. I got up and tried to open the door only to find that it was locked. So you think, "Well why don't you unlock it?" I would have if I could have. A while ago, we turned the lock so that it faced out so that we could keep Lydia in her room at night, and then Lydia learned how to lock the door. I had even thought the week before that I needed to put something in the room incase Lydia locked me in. I should have listened, because this time we were ALL locked in the room. No one else was home to get me out, my cell phone was sitting in my purse in the kitchen, and Jeff wasn't going to be home for at least 7 1/2 hours, so I it was either find something to unlock the door, or climb out the window and walk around the house. I didn't want to deal with the window (that would have been my last resort if I couldn't find anything) so, I had to figure out something that I could stick in the lock to unlock it, or find something to use as a screwdriver. I scoured the room for 40 minutes looking for something to use, until finally I was able to bend a thin metal bracelet so that it would fit in there and turn the lock to get us out. I was incredibly embarassed, and called my friend, and then called my mom. Jeff laughed at me, and fortunately now I can laugh at myself.

For several days after wards, Lydia would lock the door and I had to use my new tool to get out. I even tried putting on one of those door handle locks to see if that would deter her from her new fun of locking the door. It didn't, and finally I was so tired of it, that we turned the lock around to the correct way. I still keep my tool for when Lydia locks herself in her bedroom, or I want Lydia to stay out because Claire is sleeping.

Adventure #2
This one happened last month, and made me count my blessings. Jeff was getting ready to head off to school, and all of us were in the master bedroom as I talked with Jeff and the girls played on the floor. For this story to make sense, you have to know that the vanity to the masterbath is located right off of our bedroom with no door seperating it. So, as Jeff and I were talking we suddenly see sparks flying, light flashing, and hear an electerical buzz by the vanity. As we look over to Lydia, she is crying and saying, "Fire! Fire!" As we get over to her, we see that she had stuck a hair clip into the outlet, and had indeed started a little fire, which fortunately stopped when she let go of the clip and it fell out of the outlet. It didn't initally look like Lydia had gotten hurt, but later we noticed that she had some burns on her fingers from where she was holding the clip. It scared all of us, and all I could do was hold my little girl and offer a prayer of thanks that she was okay, and that things didn't turn out worse. The outlet is at counter level, and so when we initally moved in didn't put outlet covers on it because she couldn't reach it. Now because of our little incident, we replaced the outlet, and it is now up to code with a GFIC outlet, so we try to keep it in the "off" position. At first we thought there was a bigger problem because the outlet wouldn't work and the circuit breaker didn't show that the breaker had been turned off. Fortunately it was just that the actually switch didn't change, but the only problem was the circuit breaker had been turned off. We are grateful that nothing else happened, and know that we were blessed to be kept safe.





So, there are some of the adventures that we have had with Lydia. We love her, and are grateful that she is apart of our family. She definitely keeps us on our toes, but we could never imagine our family any other way.