Judge not, that Ye be Not Judged...

North Texas experienced a pretty traumatic case of a missing boy recently. The 2-year-old was playing in the front yard and just disappeared. Authorities searched the area thoroughly for two days, and were about to declare that it was likely that he was kidnapped, when a helicopter spotted him from the air. He was leaning over to drink out of a cattle pond. He had been wandering around for three days through the countryside, spending the night alone--he was in good condition besides being a little dehydrated.

Naturally, since we also have an adventurous two-year-old, we were very annoyed with this story. It outraged us that these parents, even in the country where they weren't worried about child abduction, would just let their two-year-old run wild and unsupervised long enough to get away like that. We try to keep a constant eye on our Kaitlyn, who always seems to surprise us.

She always seems to be testing her boundaries, which is a very common thing for this age. I laughingly call it "testing the tensile strength of the earth", because it is commonly destructive.

In no particular order:

1) Scooting an oak chair across the kitchen floor so she can climb up and "pet the fish" (Ryan's pet, Marlin, who is still alive and well and has so far avoided any unwanted contact).

2) Dumping an entire freshly-made pitcher of sweetened ice tea on the newly-mopped kitchen floor

3) Getting her head stuck for about a minute inside our entertainment center while we frantically and gently tried to retrieve her. Direct quote: "It was dark and scary inside that cave!"

4) Playing "Will it break?" by dropping certain toys off the second floor onto the tile below.

5) Assaulting poor Ryan at every chance by walking up nonchalantly and clobbering him.

6) When I tell her I'm going to read her a story, she grabs 7 or 8 books and screams if I stop before reading them all...

7) Total number of Fran's headband-thingy's that she's broken: 40

In other words, little miss Kaitlyn takes every opportunity to have an effect upon her world.

Last week, after they found the missing boy, Fran was making French toast for breakfast. She always makes a double-batch and freezes some of it so Ryan can have French toast for breakfast during the school week, which is a nice treat.

Fran was busy cooking and had turned on a cartoon for Kaitlyn to watch. Ryan was in the living room building something with legos. I was upstairs at my desk reading. Apparently, Fran asked Ryan to step outside and get the newspaper, and Kaitlyn said "I can do it!", which seems to be her trademark slogan these days. Fran told her "No, honey, we'll have to go get it in a minute." and went back to cooking.

A few minutes later, something caught her eye outside.

It was our daughter, wandering out in the middle of our neighborhood street in her pajamas and bare feet!

Fran screamed, threw down her spatula, and ran through the open front door. Kaitlyn was startled, and, likely sensing that she had done something wrong from the horrified look on her mother's face, reported "I'm getting the mail!"

Fran fran straight into the street and scoped her up, then realized that there was a garage sale being hosted across the street. About a dozen people were now curiously watcher her raving in the middle of the street in her pajamas. Of course, she was scolding Kaitlyn and was very agitated, but grateful that nothing had happened, especially in light of the fact that there were cars coming and going for the garage sale, and that she might not have been spotted if Fran hadn't randomly used her "mom radar". It really made us shutter.

Later that day, we got heavy duty chains for all of the doors so we can be certain that she doesn't get out again, but I'm curious as to what will be next...