Losing a year of my life..

We had just finished dinner. Lucy (nearly 5) asked to be excused from the table while I finished eating dinner with our youngest (now almost 19 months old) - who likes to eat almost as much as I do, and tends to take his own sweet time at the dinner table.
Lucy yelled something up to me asking for permission. It didn't quite register but I think I yelled back: "Yeah sure" ..knowing I'd go find her in a minute. After washing up the little one and clearing the table a bit I noticed that Lucy hadn't touched her glass of milk. I called her name. No answer. I stepped to the edge of the staircase and yelled up towards her room: "Lucy, come here." Still nothing. After three loud attempts I figured she either had her door closed and couldn't hear me or was ignoring me - so I began to yell "mommy threats". "Lucy Grace you come down here right now or you'll have a consequence!!" Still not a peep.
This was not like her. I decided to go see if she was playing in her closet unable to hear me. No sign of her upstairs. In fact, all the lights were off. Hmm. That's odd, I could have sworn she'd be upstairs with all her toys.
A cold shiver of fear passed over me and I remembered something that had struck me as odd.. When we got home I noticed that a couple of things had moved. I'd left something on the bed (a buzzer that scares the pets off the bed so that they don't leave the bed hairy - a bigger deal to my hubby than me, but it's routine now - I always set it on the bed before leaving for the day) - and it had been moved, it was sitting on my alarm clock now. I started to worry. I grabbed the baby - didn't want to be away from him. We went to the lower level. I was shrieking now, my voice panicked as I was calling Lucy so that she'd KNOW I wasn't kidding. "LUCY! LUCY WHERE ARE YOU!?!?!"
My voice sounded hysterical. I turned on every light in every room we entered. I turned on the light in the crawl space. I kept shrieking: "LUCY!!! LUCY!!!" Now I was really scared. Our house is small. Maybe 1400 sq. feet. I had looked everywhere and she was nowhere to be seen. I ran to the garage. No Lucy. Opened the garage door and looked out into the darkness. Could someone have slipped out with her while I had my back turned? How? It hadn't been 10 minutes since I'd seen her last.

I grabbed the phone and debated: 911 or my husband on his business trip in Chicago?
I called my husband and said: "Lucy's gone missing! I am SO not kidding." He insisted it wasn't possible and told me to look again. I looked again. Each inch of the upper level, back to the garage - where I decided seemed safest (although it's cold out) because what if whoever took Lucy is still in there? By now I'd been searching and screaming for 5 or more minutes. Again at my husband's urging I went down to the lower level, into the crawl space.. the entire time holding a squirming (25lb) toddler who didn't understand why I wouldn't let him down to play. I was just about to hang up on hubby to call 911 when I went to set baby boy down on our bed.. and noticed the lump in the sheets. There she was. Sound asleep in my bed. So deeply asleep she hadn't even noticed my panicked shrieks just feet from her ears.

When my heart stopped racing I was very relieved. Most of all relieved that I hadn't called 911 to report a missing child..a missing child who was merely asleep in her mama's bed. Hubby didn't miss a beat: "You have to post this on your blog." Apparently, he likes me to share stories that embarass me.

Tonight I feel sure I took a year off my life and at least 10 new gray hairs have sprouted. What they don't tell you about having children (before you have them) is that once they're born it's like your heart is walking around outside your body. No one told me that hearing my baby cry would sometimes hurt, physically. No one warned me that everything else would seem far less meaningful compared to the whims and judgements of my young children. And clearly no one warned me they could sleep so deeply that it might nearly give you a heart attack!