We'll call this, potty training gone VERY VERY BAD.

This afternoon after doing some painting, I looked over and realized Andrew and Abby were sleeping in front of the TV, and I wanted sleep too. So I went to take a little nap upstairs, I'm almost positive when I went upstairs, that the door was LOCKED.

I woke up to Andrew saying, "Liz, do you know where Abby is?? The front door is wide open!" We searched all around the house, the dogs and Abby were missing. I went looking on foot Andrew went looking by car. And down the street around the corner and almost to the next street I walked into two police cars.

Police officer walks up to me, and I tell him I'm missing my two year old daughter (which always ALWAYS sounds worse saying it out loud to a police officer than in your head). He acts like he hasn't seen her, takes my information down, sees my husband drive by and THEN realizing Andrew's stopping to come with me to talk to him, says he has her. (I know it's bad to lose your baby, but honestly, do you really have to act like you don't have her when you do?! And why stop the act when your husband comes? It was mean, it's hard enough knowing she's missing! Why play games with the wife and not the husband?)

This is where the potty training gone bad is....

Anyway, she was heading to the park and was at a house that looks exactly like ours and stopping to pick flowers with our two dogs with her. Abby startled and mad that she needed to use the bathroom and mom wasn't around peed in the bushes. Trying to figure out what to do, she started knocking on the door to say she peed in the bushes. The lady worried, was trying to keep her dogs from our dogs and find out where Abby's parents were-- and surprise! we weren't there, because we didn't know she was gone and we were sleeping!

When the lady's husband drove up his driveway he tried to get a hold of the dogs who were mauling her to death from peeing AND not staying near home. Unfortunately, the dogs went running away from him and left Abby, with no diaper or underwear on, at their house. Not seeing any parents, they called the police.

Side note: Our collie is good at telling on Abby when Abby's doing something wrong/getting into trouble. Maddie comes and licks me and wimpers and then points with her nose to where Abby's getting in trouble. As soon as I notice and get up, Maddie takes me, by making sure I follower her, to Abby only to find out that Abby's in trouble. Maddie then goes and lays down and lets me handle the rest. Maddie is also typically good at making sure Abby stays close by. When Abby starts to wonder Maddie licks her face until she starts walking in the right direction-- to me or home. This time Abby just ignored the mauling and licking and kept walking.

Anyway, she was found diaperless because we're trying to potty train her. If we put a diaper on her she'll NEVER tell us when she needs to use the bathroom and just use a diaper. If we put underwear on her, she'll use them like a diaper, which means cleaning up after a lot of pee and her not getting the point (we tried this for a couple of months). But if she doesn't have anything on at all, she won't go until she lets me know that she needs to go and we do something about it-- thus when we're at home with no visitors, she's diaper less to try and potty train her. Which of COURSE, with my luck, is how she ran away-- diaperless. And she was caught peeing in the bush, which is where the potty training went very bad.

The police took Andrew's license number and gave us Abby. Well first they wanted Abby to have some kind of reaction to me to make sure I'm the mom. Which OF COURSE she didn't... she didn't say MOM!!! or anything. She did her usually, hand motion of I want to be held by that person, which presumably the police don't know or understand. But when she saw Andrew drive by in the car I heard her say (while I was talking to the police officer)"DADDY!!!!" in a very happy excited, I know him voice. And she did it again, when they gave her to us, so they trusted that he was the dad. They then repremended us, telling us, that this could have gone very bad had we been in a different neighborhood, but because it's a quiet nice neighborhood it didn't. (DUH, we knew that, that's why we MOVED here! Not that we were planning on her running away but because the last house we were in WAS that bad neighborhood that could have gone wrong).

I think normally they would have filed a report and done more had Andrew not handed the officer his license AND his military ID. The officer said "you're military? and andrew said yes" and then the officer didn't do anything more after that or write down any more.

We returned home to find the dogs trying to get into the house to tell us about Abby. When they saw that Abby was with us they stopped and just wanted to get inside to get a drink of water!

So, thank fully she was safe and we found her and we live in a good neighborhood. And we know that the dogs will stay with her until someone tries to catch them-- good dogs (although I wish they would have stayed with her the entire time-- but for not training them for this kind of situation they did well). And thankfully we got written off because of our military ID and didn't have further problems.

We have many blessings to thank our Heavenly Father for tonight. AND I guess a lesson on "we do not leave the house with out mom and dad's permission and presense, ESPECIALLY to the park" is probably appropriate. AND we need to make sure the she can't open the dead lock and that it's locked!

You're suppose to wake up FROM night mares not INTO nightmares. But thank goodness my baby is HOME!!