The Bathroom Break-In

In the middle of my "Paula Deen" moment yesterday I was startled by my one year old banging on a door. Now this is not an uncommon occurrence. Autumn will often go into her bedroom to play, close the door, and then bang on it for either my husband or I to open it up for her. This then turns into a game. Close door, Banging, Open door, laugh and repeat.

So when I heard her banging on a door, I assumed that she was waiting for me to come and open her bedroom door, so that she could close it again. As I walked down the hall and turned the corner I was met by Autumn's OPEN bedroom door and the CLOSED bathroom door. "Great", I thought. "I am going to open this door to an entire roll of toilet paper on the ground."

This is what I would have found had I been able to open the door. That's right, Autumn had locked herself in the bathroom. Upon realizing this I got frantic. My head starting spinning with thoughts of what she could get into. "Is the child proof lock on the cabinet?", "Can she climb onto the toilet, fall off and crack her head open?", "Is the soap out of her reach?"

After I reassured myself that she was fine, a little annoyed that I wasn't opening the door, but fine otherwise, I called my husband. He was on his way home from work, but had called to say he would be running a few errands on the way home, I called him to say that he was going to have to wait on the errands. Then I got to work trying to figure out how I was going to get Autumn out of the bathroom.

We do not have the push locks on our doors, instead you have to turn the lock (I still cannot figure out how she managed to do that!). The complexity of the lock posed a problem. I quickly realized that this was not going to be as easy as sticking the end of a clothes hanger in there to pop it open. So off to the garage I went to try to figure out where my husband keeps his tools. Then with screw driver in hand I headed back to the bathroom.

It didn't take me too long to get the handle off of the door, and once I did I could see my little girl sitting on her "princess potty" in the corner of the bathroom, waiting to be rescued. "Hi Mama" she said with a waive and a smile.

Now that I had the handle off I had to figure out how to get the lock to turn. After trying and trying I could not figure out what I needed to do to get this door open! Just as I was reaching the height of my frustration, Steve walked in the door and with one pop of a button the door was open and Autumn was out.

"Hi Dada!", Autumn said. Followed by a "Thanks Dada" and a kiss.

"Thanks Dada!" I thought. I worked on getting that door open for what felt like eternity. Steve walks in and has it open with one move! Story of my life.

Two lessons learned in our house that night. Autumn knows how to lock the doors and we now know how to break into our hall bathroom.