Front Row: A 14.5 Month Development-Blitzkrieg as Told in List Form.

We just sit around and watch her, with eyes too focused, as if honing in on 11 tiny grunting football players on a too-small television set. We don't blink, we don't look away. Our glass of wine or water or juice remains untouched on the up-high counter until long after the performance is over.

We utter a continuous stream of adjectives that land in the air like blow-horn emissions, vague and grossly inaccurate in describing the scene—brilliant! incredible!—and we eventually, inevitably land at a place where we have nothing left but rhetoricals. Is this what other parents do?

We then complete the process by sliding lithely into simple exchanges such as the following:

Me: Hey honey, did you just see her do that? (Even though he is sitting right next to me.)

Jesse: I did. That was awesome.

A bit later...

Jesse: Hey honey, did you catch what she just said?

Me: I did. She is just outrageous.

And so on.

We watch her, we play with her, we watch her some more—how did she figure that one out all by herself ?—and then we discuss it over dinner after we put her to bed.

And so concludes a well-aimed sketch of our lives at present.

I keep a journal handy for those moments when documenting something notable that Opal has done, said, accomplished or discovered is needed. (It could be argued that it's not so much me needing to document it as the world simply requiring such divinity to be documented—like a human-almanac—and I am simply doing my part by stringing together a line of gorgeous beads that I've found.)

The least threatening way to share some of her most recent gems is in list form.

Let's dive right on in:

1. Traditions.

When I go and get Opal from her morning nap, it's tradition to launch immediately into a game of peek-a-boo, no discussions, no questions asked. There is a quilt hanging over the front of her crib which serves as the perfect prop as I drop to the floor and say "wheeeere'smommy?" a question that is quickly responded to by her dropping to hands-and-knees, crawling to one side of the crib and lifting a corner of the quilt (in proper voila' fashion) where mama's mug is exposed before her very eyes. A predictable surprise which never fails to be a satisfying crack-up.

To take it a step further and inspire uncontrollable explosions of laughter (only intended for very short stints) I then emerge over the side of the crib as octopus-mama with arms flailing as if under water, lapping over like car-wash strips.

So many customs contained in a day. This one is so established that now all I have to do is crack open the door to her sacred naptime-cranny to inspire a little girl—brilliantly beautiful with shiny eyes and slanted bedhead—to spring her head jack-in-the-box style over the side of the crib and announce boo!

Peek-a-boo is a treasured activity hardly limited to post-naptime, though. Yesterday, she walked into the living room, stood in front of Jesse and I, squatted at the knees, paused, and hopped up declaring boo! She basked in the wake of her independent display of entertainment, a totally conspicuous grin, then repeated the entire thing.

2. Body and music.

She loves the song "Skip to My Lou" as sung by Elizabeth Mitchell from my I-tunes. When the song is over and shifts to the next song (which happens to be the timeless classic "12 ladybugs") she immediate chimes in LOU-LOU-LOU-LOU. We cannot currently listen to any other music while the little one is in our midst. We have it on continuous-repeat and, believe-you-me, the moment she is strolling down the hall for nap or bedtime both Jesse and I dive at the I-pod like flag football to change it up.

But there is nothing cuter than her dance moves: a slight bend at the knee, hands-fisted and arms pulled tight to the body, a slight rotation left to right, hinging at the hips, stomping and marching when on the hardwood floor or a piece of cardboard. Movements that have nothing to do with the music that accompanies her, aligning with only the pulse that metronomes in her own temples and wrists and chest, utterly free of self-consciousnesses or need for approval. It's hopeless for either Jesse or I to try and match her on the dance floor.

3. Memory.

She pulled a plastic bag from the pocket of my backpack this morning and said poo-poo and it was indeed one of the bags we used to pick up Olive's poop.

Daddy was wearing a shirt that said Boston, which he pointed out to her once in passing. Many days—weeks?—later, she pointed to it and said Oston.

I made the mistake at some point of picking up a piece of trash and calling it 'dirty' while shaking my head to convey that being dirty was not something to be proud of. (Or put in your mouth, for that matter.) Now, she is obsessed with pointing out all things dirty and, if possible, bringing them to mama. It took a long while to convey that toys on the floor were not dirty but food on the floor definitely was.

Lately when I sing our daily songs to Opal, she chimes in. Just recently it happened twice—I sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. How I wonder what you are." And Opal stepped in by singing UP-A-BA!—"Up above the world so high..." She hit her cue perfectly. Then again while I sang "3 little monkeys jumping on the bed. One fell off and bonked his head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said..." and Opal looked up at me from the changing table, and as she rubbed pretend lotion into her belly, said NO-MO—"No more monkeys jumping on the bed."

Bravo!

4. Play.

One of her favorite pastimes is delivering random objects to the people in her space.

She puts the knobby puzzle pieces in the correct spots and even figured out that this is one of the rare occasions where the the circle does indeed fit in the square opening.

She plays beautifully, often surprising me with her creativity and ingenuity. I never quite know what I'll find when I peek my head out of the kitchen into the living room, with sudsy hands or food in mid-prep. Oh! She figured out how to put the finger puppets on her teeny fingers. Wow! She's dragging the monkey and the doggie around the room on the make-shift leashes we tied on earlier. Hurray! She stacked the cups all by herself.

More often than not, she'll march into the kitchen and join me, with an armful of objects to line up on the open dishwasher door. The dishwasher is a no-touch apparatus (because of easy accessibility of knives) but there is no law against putting plastic cups and B on the open door as I load up plates, sippies and myriad mugs. The moment is concluded by clearing all the toys with a sweep of the arm and yelling CLO! as we shut the door together.

Or she may appear with something in her clutches, repeating OPA-PEEZ. Translation: Open, please. A purse or satchel or eyeglass cases or a box of cards. She occasionally carries with her an item that will, bless it's heart, never open. Keys or a piece of crumbled paper, for example. But for the most part, she seems to understand exactly what it is she's requesting.

She picks out the books she wants to read. Gone are the days when we, as parents, get to pick out a small stack of our personal favorites. She currently wants to choose from a small selection of books about birdies, dadas (dogs), books with peek-a-boo flaps, books with animals, specifically gollas (gorillas), or the Achoo book (the one where the hibernating bear is awoken by a pepper fleck from the stew his friends were making in his cave while he slept. An excellent book with rhymes like layers of flavor and a twist at the end that never lets me down). Though occasionally she does mix it up, like tonight when she asked for mymore, mymore.

???—Sorry kiddo, no compute. Until she reached over the side of the rocker to grab the book "My World." What, you can read now? Have mercy.

She loves to have tea parties which is a splendid opportunity to include the people around her in her affairs. She loves to help mama water the plants by pouring water from her empty cup while making the sound sshhhh. The likeness she conveys of water-pouring is uncanny. She also periodically snags a diaper wipe and spot cleans the entire house.

5. Did she really just say that?

Opal's language—the actual forming of the words, the sounds and enunciations— improves on a daily basis, along with the ability to form entire words now instead of simply fragments. The letter L used to come out like a playful guppy in her mouth: blue was bla-la-la-lue for weeks until the guppy settled and now it's a precious two-syllable BA-LUE. Milk was mil until recently. Ball, book, car and many others have also recently regained there proper consonant-endings.

Knuckles used to exist as a one-syllable utterance that we only understood contextually (which, come to think of it, was the case for many words) Now it is knuckles, plain as day and pleasingly paradoxical to hear passing through her tiny mouth. Not only can she pronounce the word, but her placement along with the lack of it's overuse, is impressive and skillful. She knows that knuckles follows some variation of "good job" and is quick to follow up praise that is given with a simple "knuckles." However, she refuses to simply go around and "do knuckles," simply giving it away to impress the masses. It needs to be preceded by appropriate and authentic measures.

She calls her beloved stuffed gorilla golla.

She says BESSU when we sneeze. She said TANKA this morning when I handed her a toy she was looking for. No joke, TANKA. Last night, she called Jesse HOMIE. We had used the word in jest and she gobbled it right up. (Ahem, yet another reinforcement for us to continue to spell-out swear words.)

Her favorite sentence is still one of a hundred bye-bye fill-in-the-blank variations. Bye-bye mama, bye-bye dada, bye-bye dippy (diaper—see the earlier blog "Bye-Bye Dada and Other Language Variations.") and so on. A very resourceful phrase if you consider it.

Gompa, gompa, lu-lu (grandma, grandpa, Lucy the dog) is the mantra for heading over to grandma and grandpa's house, which is ever the anticipated outing.

6. More play.

Many of her stuffed animals are on leashes, including but not limited to the fuzzy shitzu bound by a necktie, chi chi the yapping chihuahua that is lassoed by a curtain-tie and the Velcro-pawed monkey that has the distinct privilege of wearing the actual dog-leash which is hooked on a collar that was fashioned by a ribbon. The monkey is her favorite creature to walk, an activity that travels with the accompanying mantra: Waka-moki! She recently realized that it's much less cumbersome to 'walk the monkey' by actually carrying the monkey versus dragging it behind you, vulnerable to get caught on furniture corners and trip you up. She blasted from behind the loveseat just last week, holding the monkey above her head like a flag of glory.

7. Developments and understanding.

A few days ago, Opal walked up to me, tugged on my pants (an action fully associated with toddler-hood, one of many examples throughout the day where it's declared before my very eyes just how much she is growing up!) and said poo-poo. Once she realized she had my attention, she turned tail and led me down the hall to her bedroom to stand purposefully in front of her changing table.

TODAY was her very first day of feeding herself with her own spoon from her own bowl! She's been eating off-and-on for months from a spoon that I fill and hand to her. But today she had her own spoon and her own bowl of chunky soup and she went to town. Let's just say it was wise to robe her in a food-smock and head-cover beforehand and that I was cleaning up soup (from lunch) from inside her nose tonight before putting her jammies on for bed. What a thrill.

She points out when mom is wearing a necklace or buttons, necka and butta, respectively, and when mom or dad have on a hat. She loves to wear necklaces, buttons and hats of her own. She has a lovely amber necklace that she requests on a regular basis and also holds beads and scarves to her neck to make it appear as if she's adorned in neckwear.

Sigh*...

There is much much more, but I'm on the other end of tired and desperately wanting to post this before it grows big enough to rival the world's largest rubber band collection.

But if you need anything, you know where to find us.

Front row, center.

Shouting bravo! from behind our 3-d glasses, with un-hinged jaws and hands made raw from clapping.

Eight-minute speed round: Knuckles Pishy.

Tonight, our bedtime books consisted of the following: the book about colors (hello birdies!), the book about houses from around the world (hat-hat-hat when we reach the eskimos) and the book about Clifford the big red dog when he was a puppy (dada!).

Once we finished, we turned the music and the lights off and clicked on the fish. Opal's noise machine doubles as a night-light projector and comes with different slides of wildlife. Opal's favorite is by-and-large the image of the fish. HI PISHY! when we turn it on and NIGHT-NIGHT PISHY when she goes to sleep.

We were winding up the bedtime routine, rocking in the rocking chair as she willingly drank her milk, something she's been inexplicably boycotting lately. I hummed Twinkle Twinkle into he ear as she gulped. After half the sippy was down the hatch, I said "Good job honey."

She set down her milk to calculate a reply.

She looked up at me, held up five open fingers and said "knuckles mama." Then she shifted her held-open hand to face the fish-projection on the ceiling and said "knuckles pishy." At which point she picked up her sippy cup, pudgy as hell with self-pride, and continued to drink while I re-hinged and replaced my jaw in it's rightful place.

xo.

Documentation-addiction

There is a member of my family (who shall, for the moment, remain nameless) who prides herself in carrying multiple tools of documentation with her at all times. She lives her life from behind a view-finder the way someone who fears chemical warfare may permanently adorn themselves in a gas-mask. Aside from periodic breaks to eat or use the toilet, I can never recall seeing her without a photographing weapon of choice. This is a topic of prominent irritation for the whole family, who no longer attempt to hide their groans when being filmed while chewing a bite of turkey or intercepted on their way out the door for a force-faced family photo.

I never understood this near-panic stricken desire to document every waking moment.

Until now.

For the first many months of Opal's life, when the days seemed to brim with an abundancy of time (which could admittedly be a hind-sight mirage) I felt on top of my chronicling game.

At that time I was organized and had a plan for gathering and sharing Opal-highlights. I wrote a monthly letter to my her, describing in great detail how she was growing before our very eyes, offering her one example after another of the details of her rapid and successful flourishing. I also posted albums on Facebook with captions and a small synopsis. I sent a monthly email to family and close friends with photos attached and another small synopsis of the particulars, the developmental attributes, the mesmerizing aspects of this little girl's existence. A proclamation of our Noticing, long before she would ever understand or nearly care.

These wildly in-depth registers were incredibly comforting for a while, helped me to harness the time as it passed, as if the next month was authorized to proceed when I typed, emailed and posted it into being, rather than when the calendar said so.

As to be expected, this impressive— perhaps rigid?— level of documentation is indeed no longer happening. Somewhere around the 1 year mark, when life-in-addition-to-momhood began to flourish, a time that coincided with spending every evening for upwards of month editing the 9-hours of video we'd taken of her in her first year down to a 30-minute nub to share with the family for the holidays, I started to fall behind in other areas. The photos are piling up. The bits and nibbies of Opal-notes and particular scene sketches are shoved in a drawer. I have a half-dozen blogs perched in the unfinished drafts folder like a row of unpainted tchotchkes on a shelf.

I am indeed documentation-constipated.

And Opal has no interest in pausing to wait for me to catch up. Rightly so— I could barely keep up with her when keeping up with her was all I had to do, my hobby, my job and my cure for insomnia and when Bravo! Get the Camera! accompanied her kicking a blanket off or batting at a dangling toy.

She's on fire now—grasping things on a daily basis. shocking us with brilliance that is honestly too stunning and inscrutable to pin down.

In a way, it is difficult to simply witness such shocking splendor— a peacock standing before its wall of feathers or a manatee chomping at lettuce as if they were both weightless in space, or an orchid omitting a drip of sap like a tear or a sunset that looks as if the sky were melting into the neat pencil-line of the horizon—without wanting to capture it all and take it on the road to nibble on like an endless supper.

So this year, I aim to relax a bit.

To allow myself to enjoy Opal with perhaps a little less time behind the pen or the view-finder.

I'll never not scribble down the noteworthy moments or snap photos or blog about, as the example du jour, her new obsession with walking the rag-doll monkey around the living room repeating walka-walka-walka-walka through a thoroughly self-pleased grin.

But I do aim to gather the moments with more an attitude of treasure hunting rather than panic-induced hoarding.

And to the dear auntie who was referred to in the beginning: I understand more than you know the impulse of wanting to set up camp permanently behind the camera lens. It somehow dulls the inherent heartbreak of the simple fact that all moments pass, never to taste the same in retrospect as they did the moment they occurred.

But the good news is that a continuous stream of other moments are right around the corner, ready to pounce, giggling "Boo!" with side-sloped bedhead, candy-striped jammies and a very warn bunny tucked under one arm.

Olive.

This morning we took our first walk without our beloved, sweet, complex, oft neurotic-but-always-well-meaning pooch, Olive. Opal was in the backpack, and my hands were strangely free, searching for refuge pulling straps and wedged in pockets.

Olive died four days ago exactly, during our morning walk. Opal was attached to the front of me in the facing-out Bjorn, holding the kelly-green leash in her mittened hand. We moseyed through a spill of sunlight in the open-space near our house with not a single tree to intercept. Olive took one jolly lap through the tall, crispy grasses, bouncing and light-footed like her wild forefathers or kin in the jungle, returned to us looking not-abnormally fettered. She tossled with a passing poodle before lying down abruptly. She then seized for a moment and died, quickly, completely and silently at our feet, leaving us entirely shocked and gobsmacked with grief in her wake. (I speak for myself and for Jesse when he arrived. Opal, however, was not at all distressed. In fact, when Jesse arrived at the scene, he said Opal was wearing an emphatic grin).

There is a much longer story to precede this scene. The story of Olive and her impulses, of a hundred similar examples before the fateful moment she chose to eat through a suitcase to consume the dark chocolate inside. All of these instances narrowed into the single snapshot of that particular afternoon: the vision of wrappers and destroyed luggage and having no idea of the potential danger. The induced vomiting, vet calls and extreme supervision. If she starts acting weird, take her to the hospital. She never acted weird, never weirder than usual. In fact, she slept through the night and awoke to visit Opal and receive a dozen kisses and a plop-down hug. I thought a walk would do her good, burn some of the energy that congealed from being forced to stay in one spot for so long. But, it seemed the caffeine that was absorbed into her little body, in spite of the vomiting, increased her heart rate more than she could handle when she went for a run.

It was a perfect storm of events. The vet said over the phone the next day.

There is much more writing to be done on this topic, to be sure. Three years of Russian-doll emotions want to be sifted through and organized on the page, like lining up threads for needlepoint. It will take me a while to sort it out, it was not a simple relationship. But I wanted to write something in the meantime to mark the time in some way, put a notch in the sidewalk. To acknowledge the fiery life of this little dog and how suddenly, unexpectedly, it came to an end.

Bon Appetit.

Opal is teeny.

Fifth percentile for height and weight. She wears the same diaper size that she did back in March, so little she wasn't even close to rolling from back to front yet—front-to-back was still a novelty!

On paper-diaper days (daycare and grammy-days), she wears 9 months or 6-12 month bottoms, else her drawers slip right off. Wearing a cloth diaper bumps her up to the 'appropriate' 12 month sizing. She's barely gained a thing in the 5 or 6 months since she's been crawling, cruising, and now walking (!)—due presumably to burning twice the amount of calories she did prior. Not only that, but her opinions and inability to yet refrain from asserting them has swelled into every zone, including and especially the high chair.

I remember the days, with a bit of nostalgic hankering, when liking a food was as simple as, well, liking a food. When there were no politics involved. These days, a sweet potato can be a thing of beauty for lunch, but demote to a thing of scorn by dinner. It all depends on the child's mood and how strong her will and resistance need to be on that particular occasion.

Which makes cooking for a one-year old an intriguing and complex stroll through an ever- changing neighborhood, where once a destination is achieved, it is quickly realized that the roads have all changed and a new map will be needed from there on out.

After Opal's one-year wellness visit, which was a month late due to a stream of sicknesses, I was inspired—let's be honest, hell-bent would be a more accurate term—to fatten up my kid. I spent a stream of evenings with my nose buried in Superbaby Foods and Anabel Karmel's images of happy toddlers shoveling colorful dishes into their tiny faces. I took copious notes on how much of each vitamin was recommended for her age and drew up careful meal plans for two solid weeks. My grocery list was in outline-form, with actual headings and sub-headings.

But when it came to the moment of truth, she downright turned up her nose to the shredded veggie with brown rice, thyme and Parmesan. Not even a nibble.

The home-made pizza with veggies on cornmeal crust, she refused to try.

Daddy's yummy beef and veggie stew, not on your life.

Home-made noodles and cheese never went into her mouth.

Baked tofu, root veggies and buttery couscous or quinoa, nope.

Mashed potatoes, no ma'am.

A pinch of nutritional yeast to add B-vitamins to her oatmeal actually made her cry.

Essentially, the only consistently loved meal of the day is breakfast, where she gobbles up either her daddy's steel cut oatmeal, cooked to perfection then blended with plain yogurt, bananas and raisins (totally yum!) or mommy's home-bakes zucchini or banana muffins with applesauce and yogurt. We've got breakfast nailed.

The rest of the day, though, is full of trials and errors. Starting with one thing and then deciding she wants something else and then something else again. The image of lunch usually consists of a high-chair tray full of un-eaten finger-foods, a plate of various colorful plops, and half of mom's grown-up lunch cut into wee-teeny pieces, in the likely-unsuccessful effort to share. We almost always find something she'll eat, but it takes many tries and it's rarely what I planned on.

Opal subsists essentially on all things fruity and in loaf form. Applesauce is a BFF, fresh fruit, jarred fruit blends. Spinach balls are a consistent hit, sprouted-grain breads with almond butter and jelly or hummus and muffins.

She had a brief love-affair that recently fizzled with french toast and all-fruit jelly. We'll see if they reconcile their differences. She and scrambled eggs are no longer on speaking terms.

Oh, and cheese. Let's just put it this way, cheese is an off-limits word in the Grimes household, else a ravenous mantra of cheese-cheese-cheese-cheese will ensue. Our girl loves her some cheese.

But as for veggies, it'd be accurate to say that without Spring Vegetables and Pasta, (Earth'sbest Organic Chunky Babyfood, bless it.) very little green would enter that itty-bitty mouth.

Ah yes, you can lead a horse to water...

and then you can put on a little light music, hand her a spoon and bowl to tinker with and join her with a meal of your own, trusting the fact that she is most assuredly not going to starve as she struggles to understand how to navigate this petite corner of her world.

Bye-Bye Dada and Other Language Revelations

From her highchair, Opal is at the perfect angle to see the comings and goings through the front door. On an average day, Jesse gets home from work while she is eating dinner, his entry announced by the closing of his car-door which triggers giddy wiggles from the dog. Opal notices and launches into a mantra of dadadadadada! refusing to eat and staring down the door until he enters. The reunion between the two of them after a long day apart never ceases to move me. Even when she slyly turns away from his greeting-kiss, her delight is obvious in the anticipation of his entry and the immediate calling for him when he slips down the hall to quickly change out of his work clothes.

Give her another few months and a slightly broader vocabulary, and she'll be scrambling to tell daddy every iota of every detail of the day. Another many months from then—when her bedtime is a little later than 7pm— and she'll be telling both of us about the trials, tribulations, excitements of a schoolday over a family meal. But there I go getting ahead of myself again.

About a week ago, Jesse was home for the evening and when dashed down the hall to change, Opal hollered Bye-bye Dada! She then turned to me as if to measure the level of her success from my response, as if she'd been practicing this one in private for a while now and saving it up for a grand moment.

And indeed it was.

Jesse!! Did you hear that?? It was her first official sentence, not simply repeated verbatim, but understood, inserted into a perfectly normal, perfectly lovely evening routine. Just like that. So much of her language up until this point had been prompted, copied or strings of ramblings. And here, she took two words she'd been saying for a while individually, understanding them as pieces of the puzzle, held them up to the light and —snap!— put them together all on her own.

It's dazzling to watch this process.

Since then, she's been running wild with the bye-byes, celebrating her toddler-verbage as often as possible. It's been Bye Bye Dada (Dada also means Doggie, decipherable only by context and even then occasionally questionable), Bye Bye Mew Mew (Kitty), Bye Bye Mama (me) and Bye Bye B and Baby (stuffed companions). She says Bye Bye D (A small bottle of vitamin D that she loves to play with. Hilarious.) as if bidding farewell to a friend over the phone. M

My own personal favorite took place a few days into her bye-bye discovery; we were changing her diaper, of which she preciously refers to as dippy, and she said Bye Bye Dippy.

I registered in that very moment a pronounced and intense need to document every adorable word/phrase/revelation that passes her lips for, roughly, the next two decades.

That's right, honey! Bye Bye Dippy!

Bye-Byes also help her to cope and understand when something is coming to an end. Instead of just taking her away from an activity or a thing, it works much better to say "Tell the Lotion Bye-Bye!" Or when she wants to bring a stuffed animal into the bath, for example, to suggest she say Bye-Bye Monkey!

There's a palpable degree of empowerment that happens in language, indeed, on both sides of the conversation.

Locked Out.

I locked my baby inside my house last night.

And, as if it were a meal of dense red meat, I am still digesting that fact.

But I should probably start from the beginning.

Opal and I had just returned from an afternoon outing to Grammy and Grandpa's in Boulder. Six o'clock in the evening after daylight-savings makes it feel like it's passed your bedtime even before dinner's been served. I balanced Opal on one hip, car-to-house, along with two mammoth bags in an attempt to get it all in one trip.

I unloaded Opal and the bags onto the floor and greeted the animals, feeling that certain warmth that comes only in the winter months upon fleeing the cold for a toasty dwelling. A warmth that is compounded exponentially when it's been discovered that the dog hasn't torn open, consumed or scattered any food-like undesirables to clean up. I removed my coat and as I reached down to take off Opal's, I saw that she had my keys.

"Keys!" She said, pleased in the special category of knowing and naming an object successfully. And the cumulative moments that followed came from a single solitary thought-response to those very keys.

The thought was this: It's time for Opal's bath and I'll need to take those keys from her to get her into the bathtub. Things will go much smoother if I have something to replace them with, preferably something that can go with her into the bath. Her little (safe) plastic ring of keys are in the car. Perfect.

I said "be right back, honey!" left the door open a small crack, and dashed to the car and back in an estimated 10 or 15 seconds, no coat, crunching leaves, and face red with chill even from that short stint. As I opened the storm door with baby-keys in hand, a slight suction pulled the front door completely closed. The sound of shut was so secure and complete that it nearly made me gag. I knew without having to check that the door was locked from the inside.

I ran around to the back door in the off-chance that I'd forgotten to lock it before our afternoon outing, but no luck. My sweet house suddenly felt oppositional, resistant. Like a teenager who'd locked herself in her room, sulking and punishing. There was no give whatsoever, no crack in the mortar. Glass windows down for winter, heavy as a vault. And everything was inside: my purse, my phones, my contact numbers.

My child.

Our neighbors that have the spare key just happened to be in Mexico. The others just moved to Texas.

My airways shrunk with adrenaline. I ran to the next-door neighbor's house and pounded on the door, unafraid of my openly maniacal tone. Had the fleeting thought that it may make them respond faster. No answer. I bolted back to the front window to look in on Opal. Luckily, she'd found a thick folder of papers by the door and was scattering and crinkling them one-by-one, having a gay ole' time in her world of uninterrupted destruction, unaware of the goings-on in her midst.

I ran to the other next-door neighbor's house. Same maniacal knocking. Again, no answer. I ran back to see Opal pulling the contents from my work bag one at a time, examining one thing in the light and then casting it aside for the next item to appraise.

After two more empty houses and two more shifts of running back to peek in, I was tempted to take a more drastic approach and stand in the middle of the road and scream thinking someone would definitely be inspired to call the police. Opal was doing fine at the moment, but the idea of running from house to house until I found someone was staggering, and the further down the road I got, the further from my daughter I was. A car drove by and I waved and hollered like a fool, but my brown hair and dark clothing worked as camouflage in the dark.

I took a deep breath and noticed I couldn't feel the cold, or at least it wasn't bothersome. Rather, it felt welcomed, like continuously stepping out of a stuffy room, or having two hands on my shoulders shaking me into alertness.

House number five.

The house across the street and to the right, just barely visible from our front porch, is a burnt orange color, two stories, with white curtains in the front window that are always drawn. There resides a little white dog that's about the same size as the wind-up chihuahua some Canadian friends got for Opal. It yaps at each and every passer-by, living out it's own little fantasy of being all-mighty protector of it's Master's lair.

In the 3.5 years we've lived in this house, we've made a point of greeting most of our neighbors, and have made great friends with some of them. But these particular neighbors have always been an enigma— I've even used that specific word while in conversation with Jesse about them over grilled chicken and greens. There have been dozens of times when the guy who lives there has been exiting his car and walking into his house at the same time as I am, and I am determined to say hello. But he has never once looked up, always on his blue-tooth or distracted by something, or maybe I'm just far enough away to not even make it into his field of view. It's a regular occurrence and I've felt a strange obsession with meeting this person so as to end this obscure ritual of not saying hello (something that is ware-some on me, but doubtlessly irrelevant to his life). I've also seen a small child, a boy, floundering in the front yard and bouncing on the trampoline in back. And a woman with a Kate Gosselin hairdo climbing into the car in the driveway.

As I tore across the street and through their front yard, there was not a doubt in my mind that he would be the one to finally answer the door.

The little dog screeched. Good dog, I thought. His ranting along with the FBI-knocking will surely call anyone to attention. The neighbor answered.

I dumped a pile of words in front of him as if they'd gathered in my mouth in a disorganized mass. I haven't met you yet but I'm your neighbor and I locked my baby daughter in my house along with everything and I need to use your phone to call the police to come help. And I'm Heather.

He was alone in the house, said his name was Dave as he reached in his bag for his cellphone. He handed it to me, but it was a Blackberry and too complicated to figure out where the numbers were, so I handed it back right back to him. He called 9-1-1 for me. (Nobody else had a spare key and my plan was to get a cop to help me break the glass in one of the windows.)

The 9-1-1 operator very politely said they don't relate to lock-out incidents until I mentioned there was a one-year-old baby inside. He said he'd send someone out right away.

I'm coming with you, Dave said, as he slipped on well-warn tennis shoes. He didn't politely ask if I needed anything else or tell me to call if there was anything more he could do. He was definitive and concerned. And the brotherly tone made me want to cry.

I ran over first, deeply pleased to find that Opal was doing fine, having a heyday as a matter of fact. So busy unpacking everything in her midst that she didn't seem to miss Mommy a bit. There was even a strange sense of peace held in that moment. I didn't need to run away from her again. Help was on the way. She looked so warm and cozy and content—entertained, even—without even being aware that I was watching from outside. And the animals were both sound asleep, thus completing the strikingly ironic Rockwellian picture.

Until Dave caught up with me. His presence jarred Olive from her slumber and she exploded into a litany of murderous barking. (Understandably—what a strange scene that must have been from her perspective.) Her reaction startled Opal, who looked up to see us and began to sob. The dog continued to bark and Opal's cries increased in level of volume and hysteria. My entire body wanted to take one of the folded chairs that was still pointlessly perched in the front yard and throw it through the floor-to-ceiling window pane.

As I was attempting to calm both dog and baby from the outside, clearly to no avail, Dave noticed the small, sliding portion of one of the front windows was unlocked. Not until then did I realize I'd been clutching the plastic toy-keys through the entire saga. I threw them down and went after the screen window frame with a destructive fervor.

You only need to pull out the screen, he said. You don't want to bend the frame. Helpful, yes. Especially now, the next day, that the adrenaline buzz has long since washed away. But in the moment, I would've gladly gnawed through a sandwich of metal, glass and mesh to get to my baby girl. By that point, I'd estimate 10 or so minutes had passed since I was locked apart from my daughter. My patience was running thin.

Dave pulled the screen from the frame like a large, unwanted scab, and slid the window pane open. A deluge of warm air and volume escaped as I dove face-first through the opening.

Opal was a bit shaken and confused, but ultimately just fine. With her warm, heavenly little body on my hip, I thanked Dave for his incredible assistance—for saving my ass, I believe is how I put it—and we returned to our cherished home, this time sealing it up with us both on the inside. Opal wanted to be carried for a good half an hour before she was ready for bed, and I was more than happy to oblige. We sat on the couch and snuggled and swayed. I carried her in the sling and she rested her precious little head on my shoulder as the blood slowly returned to my extremities.

This morning, I baked a loaf of banana bread for our exceptional neighbor and walked over with Opal to drop it off as a proper thank you for exhibiting such outstanding acts of awesomeness. The little white dog howled her predatory tune. But this time, no one answered.