The Scariest Thing

Moving is such a pain in my butt.  Since getting married in 2006 (7 years ago for those who hate math), Ryan and I have moved 12 times.  The first 6 times were before we had any kids.  Not fun, but not as tough.  Since then not only do we have to move all of our crap, but we also have a lot of baby/kid crap (I really, really hate disassembling and reassembling the crib!) to move and to top it all off, we have to also take care of those darn kids while trying to pack and unpack a bunch of crap.

In July we moved out of my parents home and to a small town home community in West Jordan, Utah.  It's nice-there is a playground right outside our back door and a pool we can use during the summer.  We don't have to do yard work and all the maintenance is taken care of by Parker Brown.  But we really messed up the part about taking care of our kids while unpacking...

I was getting the kitchen organized and Ryan was in the garage.  The kids followed Daddy, naturally, and so I wasn't really thinking about them and where they were.  Ryan came inside and went upstairs (again, I wasn't really paying attention) and stayed up there for probably about 10 minutes.  When he came back down, Sienna trailing him, I asked him where Riley was.  He looked at me with a look of "Don't ask me, how should I know?"  We ran around and poked our heads in to every room in the house.  After Ryan looked upstairs, I ran up to look a little more thoroughly.  When we confirmed that Riley definitely was not in our house, I started to freak out.  My. Worst. Nightmare. 

We looked up and down the street by our house and didn't see him.  We ran around to the back and didn't see him.  We started running in different directions and I kept thinking, at what point should I call the police?   Because I was scared.  I knew perfectly well that there are parents just like us who never found their kids.  

After running around for another minute, I came around a corner and there was Riley.  He was wearing a shirt and a diaper.  No pants, no shoes.  And he was with a man about Ryan's age who was talking on his cell phone.  I'm sure I looked like the worst mom in the world, and it was a little awkward, but I ran up and grabbed Riley!  The man handed me the phone so that I could talk to the police.  They asked what happened, our names and address, and then we got off the phone.  I thanked the man, who was really cool and downplayed the whole thing, and took Riley inside.

We were so grateful that he was found by a kind Samaritan whose first impulse was to call the police and help return Riley to us.  If he hadn't, it could have gone badly in so many ways.  

That will probably (hopefully) be the scariest moment of my life forever.  I'm glad that I can look back and (kind of) laugh at it now.  Please, can we not move again until we are buying a home?