Sunday, August 7, 2011

Midnight Walker

Bill and I were relaxing in bed the other night, catching up on The Daily Show, when the siren went off.

Being a mother with two young children asleep, which is an oddity, my first concern was 'turn it off before it wakes the kids!' rather than the probably more relevant possibility that there might have been an intruder.

Inspired by sleeping children, I bounded through the house, followed by the husband, reached the keypad and turned off the alarm. I noticed the door to the garage was open.

"You forgot to lock the garage door!" I accused my confused husband, who did, once, forget to lock the door to the garage, which happened to gently open at 3 in the morning one night, also tripping the alarm.

"No, I'm sure I closed it. I pushed it and locked it."

I closed the door and locked it, and it occurred to me that maybe we should begin investigating.

"It was wide open," I asserted as I walked down the hall to check out the house, since no children seemed to be up or disturbed by the siren.

"Someone had to have opened it," he decided, and opened the garage door to peer into the garage. As I was in the hallway starting to investigate the rest of the house, I heard him shout a loud, gruff "HEY!"

I ran to join him, and we both stared at our little, pink-clad six-year-old, trying to get into my car, in the dark, with no idea what she was doing. I guess she was sleep walking. I knew she talked in her sleep, but I had never seen her sleep walk before. Bill had seen movement in the garage and shouted, although I'm sure that wouldn't have done him any good had it been anyone other than her.

I scooped her up, hugged her, and put her back in her bed, relieved that Bill had checked the garage because we would have locked her out, since I had already locked that door after turning off the siren.

Yikes.

From now on any nighttime security alerts will be accompanied by a household head count. That, and I put an additional 'child-proof' door handle cover on the door leading to the garage door. She can figure it out, but maybe two in a row will deter her if it ever happens again.

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