Little Boy Blue

We recently had quite a scare with our Isaac. Some of those who read my blog will have heard this story already, others have not. But it was such a memorable experience (although we would probably like to forget it), that it requires recording.
The week we moved all of our stuff in, everything was total chaos, as it always is when you are moving. One particular night I was trying to get the kids' play room organized while Dave and Isaac were upstairs eating supper (Graham was already in bed). Dave came downstairs to talk to me for about five minutes and then returned back upstairs. He then called downstairs to me and asked me if I knew where Isaac was. Isaac had spent the entire day (a very hot day) outside playing with his new buddies (two of our neighbors have boys Isaac's age). We figured he had went outside without telling us to continue playing with them. We were still in the process of teaching Isaac all the "rules" about playing outside with his friends (this has been a new experience for all of us as he has never had neighborhood friends before). I was instantly annoyed that he had done this and Dave ran to the neighbor's house to bring him home. A few seconds later, he came back and said he was not there, so we checked the other neighbor's home (they were not home). We returned back to the house and started calling, loudly, for Isaac and began looking for him. A mom knows her children well, and I know that Isaac is not the type of kid that runs away or hides from me-especially when he hears fear in my voice. We have a park behind our house, so we ran over to the park only to find nothing. There is a walking trail around our neighborhood that Isaac knows about, so Dave checked there. Again, he returned with nothing. At this point, we started to really panic. We went back into the house about four more times, each time the level of terror in our voice went up a notch. We started to think about the pedophille that lives less than two miles from our house, and we discussed driving over there. By this time, most of our neighborhood had heard we had a boy missing, and people were walking and driving their cars all around calling for him and helping us look for him. One of our dear neighbors even drove to the pedophille's apartment to see if there was any suspicious activity there. We have a drainage ditch that runs behind our house in a fairly heavily wooded area. I ran through the ditch (without my shoes...I was too panicked to even think about shoes). Then I thought about the river that runs by our house, so I drove over there and looked up and down it looking for any sign of him. I was in full-on mama-panic mode and didn't care what I had to do to find my baby. The whole thing was surreal. I kept thinking that this just couldn't be happening to me. I had always heard that the first couple of hours your child was missing was the most crucial time, and he had already been missing an hour. But, we didn't know where else to look.
Finally, we called the police. The officer arrived and he and Dave looked through the house again. He then asked me to find a piece of clothing he had recently worn to have his search dog pick up on the scent. I could not even think straight, and couldn't even find any dirty clothes (which is amazing in and of itself!). Finally, I spotted a laudry basket on the couch upstairs and went over to it. As I looked in the laundry basket, I saw Isaac's little sleeping face next to it. There he was, shoved way into the corner of the couch, covered with pillows and a blanket. My shock and relief turned once again to panic as I tried to rouse him and he was not responding. I remember thinking I was glad the officer was there because I didn't know how to perform CPR on a child. Finally, he woke up and Dave and I just cried and held him until we wanted to just collapse. The only thing we can imagine is that he had gotten really dehydrated from a day of playing in the hot sun, and was just totally exhausted from that and the events of the days before when we were moving. It was certainly NOT a normal sleep for him to have slept through ALL of our frantic calling. Some people probably wonder if we feel stupid for the whole thing having happened. My answer is no, I do not. I was too scared to feel stupid. It was certainly something I will NEVER forget.
Not long after the experience, I thought of the nursery rhyme, "Little Boy Blue."

"Little Boy Blue, Come blow your horn.
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Where is the little boy who looks after the sheep?
He's under a haystack, fast asleep."


Thank God we found him!