Confined to the cart until she's 18!

We moved into our brand spanking new house 2 years ago. It was a major upgrade from our last shack house. The thing about building a house with a major developer is they nickel and dime you for EVERYTHING. So when we were picking out our options, and materials we said (HELL) no to a lot of things we could do ourselves (for way cheaper) and decided to do them as we could afford it and had the time.

This brings me to our latest trip to Home Depot. We were in the fairly large city my husband grew up in (cause our tiny, middle-of-nowhere town has an even tinier hardware store with 0 choice) and decided to pop into Home Depot to look at tile for our first home project: a kitchen backsplash. We'd been looking and looking and found out that we have VERY different taste when it comes to tile. I like clean, classic, tumbled marble and he likes... tacky. Seriously, he wanted tiles that had apples on them. So we head to the tile aisle with the kids in the cart and about 30 minutes to try to pick something out. Recipe for disaster.

Lilianna got all squirmy and annoying and wanted to get out of the cart. We were wrapped up in trying to convince the other our choice was superior (come on, apples? I win.) so Lily stated hitting Emily in an attempt to be let down. That's when the miracle happened. We saw a tile we both loved. Excited that we finally found one we could agree upon we searched for an employee (don't even get me started on this one) to get us more from "the back" as there wasn't enough on the shelf. By this point Lily was practically screaming to get down so I told J I'd take her for a little walk around while he waited for the tile.

"In a second, she was gone"

We toured the store, stopping to look at carpet she was fascinated with, the lighting section, and lumber (what is the deal with kids and lumber?) and then headed back. When we got back J was talking with the employee who was telling us they didn't have any more in stock. As we're standing there another employee comes up with a huge skid of something and asked us if we could move our cart off to the side so they could get by, so J grabbed the cart and moved it as I was taking pictures of the tile and SKU numbers for future reference. Jason came back over (like from 2 ft away) and said we should just go cause we were going to be late to meet his family for dinner. We turned around and saw Emily sitting in the cart all happy and smiling... but no Lily.

"It happens to every parent"

It happens to every parent at some point. You let go of a hand for a second or stare a little too long at the big screen TV dreaming, and your child wanders off. I grabbed the cart and started off in the direction of the route we had taken on our tour cause she's a bit of a creature of habit and would most likely be recreating our first trip around the store. J started looking around where we had been looking at tile. Both of us calling her name and getting no answer in return. With every step my heart beat faster and the sick feeling in my stomach started to grow.

I got back to J praying he'd found her and when I saw him frantically looking around and calling her name I almost dropped to my knees and started crying. J found the lady who had been helping us and told her Lily was missing so she took off like a rocket to lock the doors. Oh my God, I had never been so scared in all my life. If someone had taken her they could be long gone by now, into a big city where we might never find her again. The urge to throw up was getting stronger and stronger.

I yelled out her name once more and a woman pushing her own little girl heard and said:

"Is she wearing a pink sweater?"

My heart stopped. "Yes!"

"She's over here I think."

I ran over and as I turned the corner I saw her peek out from under a tile display that had an "A" frame holding it up, smile and then duck back in, where she sat in the shadows giggling.


I yelled. "Why didn't you answer mommy?!"

J called to the front that we found her. I yanked her out from under the display and hugged her. Then yelled some more. Then hugged her again. J was livid, he was so scared and angry, mostly at himself. We picked her up and put her in the cart and headed for the door.

"Everything that could have happened"

The ride to the restaurant was spent discussing what we had done wrong, explaining to Lily why she should never walk away and to answer when we call her name, and going over everything that could have happened.

It took until halfway through my entrée at dinner for my heart rate to get back to normal. Seeing her sit across from me happily munching on french fries I couldn't be mad anymore. I was just so glad she was okay, and with us.

Lesson learned.