The Day My Heart Stood Still...

This morning, I experienced one of the scariest moments of my life. This morning I lost my son.

I was downstairs baking corn-dog-muffins for a Super Bowl party (by the way, they were great! Check out the recipe at allrecipes.com...And they looked so cute in my football shaped muffin mold. Yay! Let's count this as Creativity Week #22).

Anyway, I heard a few thumps that seemed to be coming from upstairs (where Jadon was still asleep in our bed), but since I didn't hear him crying (which he does when he wakes up), I figured it must just be bombing practice at Camp Pendleton. I finished up the muffins and went upstairs about 15 minutes later.

I walked into my room, and this is what I saw:

No baby in the bed!

Suddenly panicked, I figured the thumping must have been him rolling out of bed...and since he didn't cry...oh no! What if he broke his neck?! My heart froze, and I rushed around to my side of the bed, ready to see a limp body. Instead, this is what I found:

No baby on the ground!

Crap! Where did Jadon go? Now my heart was really frozen! I called out his name and rushed around, throwing off the blankets, etc. I don't remember if I heard something first or if I just decided to look under the bed, but sure enough, I peeked under the bed skirt on Jim's side and found this:

(Note: at this point, rather than rushing to the baby, he smiled at me...so I rushed to get my camera...)

After getting the camera, I took these pictures, then scooped him up and hugged him as tight as I could and said thank you, thank you, thank you Jesus! And then kept hugging him and thanking Jesus...

In trying to figure out what happened, I think he must have woke up, and for once rather than crying he exercised his new rolling over and squirming skills to get to his bottle which was sitting on my nightstand. But it's too big for him to grab so he knocked it off onto the floor, and then reached after it and followed down to the ground. Fortunately all the extra decorative pillows were on the floor so he must have landed on those and then rolled or squirmed under the bed where the bottle was, and somehow through all of this was content to hang out there for like fifteen minutes without crying. I don't get it. But at least he's safe. Whew! Thank you Jesus! I guess I won't be leaving him in my bed alone anymore!