Everything Okay Officer?

Another adventure in Isabella's life - she was rescued by a cop yesterday. We decided to spend the sunny (although cold) afternoon at the playground. Benjamin rushed into the garage to get his bike and then jumped into the car to pop the trunk and get out the stroller for Bella. Bella saw him in the car and followed him in. But then I told him that we weren't taking the stroller that was in the trunk, so he jumped back out and slammed the door. As I took the correct stroller off its hook on the wall, I heard the "click" of the doors locking. Bella was still inside and had just locked the door. Not a terrible thing if I didn't have the bad habit of leaving my key in the console when the car was in the garage. I searched the house for a spare key and called Kelly if he knew of one, but there wasn't one besides the one Kelly had with him at the office, and he was many hours from coming home.

Benjamin and I spent the next 30 minutes trying to coax Bella to unlock the door. She continued to lock it over and over again instead. When she tired of that game she started to take apart my cd case and play with each and every cd, throwing them around inside the car with great delight. I plead and screamed and banged on the window - anything to get her to try unlocking the door again, but she saw it all as a silly game mommy was playing. She banged back on the window, she tried the door handle, and she continued to lock the door again and again. Finally I told Benjamin we needed to pray. So we knelt down in the garage and prayed for help in getting Bella out of the car. Then we tried talking to her again. It didn't help. At this point she'd exhausted her attention span and was asking to be let out of the car. When I couldn't do that, she started to cry. That's when I thought, "God helps those who help themselves." I got out the phone and called 911. They told me they'd send over the next available police car. I didn't know what that meant - 5 minutes? An hour? By this time I had two impatient kids. She was in the car crying and Benjamin had decided to drape himself on the hood of the car and moan, "I want to go on a walk" over and over in a pitiful, whiny tone. But the answer to my prayer came in the form of a very helpful police officer who arrived less than 5 minutes after I called.


The funniest part of the story were my two neighbors who suddenly had mail to check the instant the cop pulled into my driveway. (The mailman hadn't arrived yet.) One stood in her driveway and stared, while the other called out, "Everything alright over there, officer?" I had to laugh. Was she planning on coming and backing him up? "Everything's fine ma'am; thanks," he said with a smirk that showed he was probably wondering the same thing. Then he took a wedge out of his car, smashed it into into the edge of my door, put an inflatable bag next to that and pumped it up, so the door was even further open, and finally took a long, thick wire and flipped up the power lock. Within a few seconds the door was open. Bella had stopped crying the minute the large, uniformed man had appeared in our garage and when the door opened, she burst into a huge grin. I picked her up and told her to thank the nice officer, which she did with a "Danke" and a wave. Before he had even driven away, both kids were on their bike/in their stroller, and we were walking to the playground, another adventure behind us. (While our neighbors stood at their windows suffocating with curiosity as to why he'd come because they're both on our side of the street, so they couldn't see inside our garage.) By the way, I will now always keep my key with me, and not in the car.

On the way to the playground, Benjamin and I discussed what had happened and I emphasized to him how God had answered our prayer and how thankful I am that he sent the cop to help save Bella. Benjamin's answer, "I knew God could do it."