Visiting the Neighbors

With the start of kindergarten, Tim and I have been slowly allowing Emma to have a bit more freedom and do more things on her own. Some easy things, such as pouring milk, pouring cereal, helping more with the cooking, chores, and visiting neighbors at the cabin. She got in the habit this weekend of asking if she can walk to the neighbors (an adoptive Grandpa and Grandma of sorts) to visit.

The neighbors love it when she comes to visit and Emma feels so proud that we let her walk there, knock on the door, and spend some time up there.

Of course, with Emma doing some visiting, Evan feels like he should be able to do some visiting as well. At this point in time, I was working out in our basement and Tim was watching the kids. Emma had already walked up to the neighbors to say hi and Evan asked Tim if he could go and visit as well. Tim says yes, and our little blond-headed boy starts walking up our driveway to go and visit the neighbors. Now for those that don't know, our neighbors are very close, are just on the other end of our driveway, and no crossing streets needed, so relatively safe. I am downstairs working out and just finished when I think it was Dad that asks me "Is Evan down there?" Curiously, I say, "No. Why?"

"Well, we can't find him at the moment."

Silence...

And now my stomach is in knots and images of him going to the lake, of him playing hide-n-seek, of him coming to find me all swirl in my mind as I ask Dad what is going on. Nightmare #3.

I get the story that he wanted to go and visit the neighbors and be by Emma and he didn't make it there. I am probably near hysterics at this point when questions spew from my mouth like, "Where is Tim? Where have you looked? How did this happen? What is going on? etc." I run back into the cabin and call for Evan. Go to his room, look into his closet, etc, while continuously saying his name. No luck.

Luckily, Mom and Dad were sitting down by our lake, so we know he didn't go down there. Tim had seen Evan head towards the neighbors and assumed all was good. However when it took Evan longer to get to the front door than it should have, Tim went to investigate and couldn't find him. Eric is at the cabin as well (for Evan's birthday party) and is looking, as are the neighbors now, as are my parents. I run down the other driveway and down to the road to see if Evan is on the road. I don't see anything and everyone splits up. My parents stay by our cabin and look more there. One of the neighbors heads right on the road, I run down a driveway/back road towards Tim's sisters houses as I think maybe Evan walked there. We walk to Tim's sisters all the time, so he easily knows the way there.

As I am running down this driveway, I see Tim and Evan slowly heading back towards us. THANK GOD! I sprint now and scoop up Evan and of course, smother him with kisses while scolding him to NEVER do that again. This makes him start to cry and while I feel bad, once again, what was he thinking? He walked all the way down our driveway, crosses a road, and gets pretty far to his aunts house until Tim reaches him.

What the hell?? Of course this prompts the "Tim, why weren't you watching him" and he responds with "whatever, I knew where he was" and we share heated words back and forth.

I think I gained much gray hair from this weekend and have learned to keep a constant watch over my little guy. Not that I am standing over him, but I always keep one eye on what he is doing. His common sense just isn't there yet and I don't want gray hair or a heart attack.