FRANTICALLY CHASING TODDLERS

For the past two Sundays I've had to drop everything and chase a two-year old escapee.  Since January I have been in charge of the nursery at our church.  We have three hours of meetings on Sunday.  The first hour is our Sacrament meeting and the families all sit together.  The second two hours are for various classes for both children and adults.  The children who are 18 months to 3 years old come to the nursery for me and my assistant Joy to nurture, teach, nourish and protect.

Last week one of my charges, Blake, decided he wanted his purple bunny rabbit.  He had not brought his bunny with him and I tried to divert his attention to something else.  (Diversionary tactics are recommended in the nursery leader's manual when children have trouble sharing or are missing their mothers.)  Blake would not be distracted from his desire for his bunny rabbit and went for the door at full speed.  I was amazed how fast he was completely out of sight.  Some bystanders had seen him and pointed me in his direction but he was gone.  I went from room to room searching with the help of some others never dreaming he could open the heavy doors to get out of the building.  His mother found him in the parking lot trying to get into the family car to retrieve his rabbit.  Thoroughly embarrassed at the breach of nursery security I apologized to his mother who then said SHE was sorry she forgot to mention that Blake learned to open those church doors and escaped from her earlier in the week.

I discussed with the church leaders options to prevent further jailbreaks.  I was told that I can't put a latch on the inside of the door in case of mutiny or a fire resulting in unconscious adults.  If no adult could unlock the door then nobody could rescue us.  I figured the only solution was to place myself at the door so anyone trying to escape would have to take me out to get by me.

Well this week I was told that some safety gates would be installed soon.  In the meantime a temporary solution was a latch usually used to child-proof a refrigerator placed on the door.  It was easy enough for an adult to override in an emergency.  Actually we had a similar latch on our refrigerator and my grandson Lorenzo knows how to open it so I'm glad he couldn't reach it.  We survived the two hours without anybody busting out.

As I was leading my grandson to the car he decided to rearrange the wood chips in the flower bed by the door to the chapel.  Then he decided to roll around in the grass.  All of a sudden he took off for the parking lot.  Laughing at me as I told him to stop he kept running full speed toward the driveway.  I dropped everything I was carrying and took off after him.  I caught him about a third of the way to the street.  I decided then and there that I am wearing sneakers to church from now on because I just can't get as much speed out of my cute shoes.  At least I remembered to wear my pedometer today.  Running is running the way I see it.

Love to all,
Marlena of Mohegan