I believe my new next-door neighbors think I’m a bad mom…all because of one night.

Hubby and I took off work yesterday and had such a blast with the kids. We went to breakfast, played in the house and went to the park. Then hubby had to go to basketball last night. I fed the kids, and we headed outside as all the other neighbors were finishing dinner and coming out as well.

The first incident happened when I was talking to my good friends. My daughter had run off with the bigger girls and was playing on the trampoline and in her Power Wheels jeep. My son was playing soccer with another little girl who’s 4 and her mom. I was watching him kick and he was doing great. Well, I must have gotten too engrossed in my conversation because all of a sudden I look over and see my next-door neighbor carrying him over to me. He wasn’t crying, but she said he had fallen. Incident #1.

My son was playing with his toys and I saw him go up into the garage (the space where hubby’s car was gone) and I started talking to my neighbors again when I heard a huge BANG! My son started crying and I ran up there to see what happened and I saw that he had knocked over the cornhole board. He was fine (nothing hurt)…the sound just scared him to death. At this point, my new neighbor (the husband) actually comes up into my garage and moves the cornhole games and says “I’ll put these over here so they won’t fall again.” I was livid because I hate it when people try to correct me on anything when it comes to parenting or taking care of my kids. But I smile and go back down to hang out with the neighbors (with my son firmly attached to me now!). Incident #2.

I’m pushing my son around on his bike and playing with him while still talking with everyone, and all of a sudden our new next door neighbor says that one of the girls is crying. I run over to the empty lot with a huge hole in it (my parents’ lot, their house had just dug) and my good friend’s little girl was sliding down and was scared (just to ease your fears, the hole is actually only about 6 feet deep, so even if she had fallen it wouldn't have been bad...she was just scared). I run to get her and at the same time notice my teeny-tiny little 4 year-old down in the hole with all the other little girls. She just calmly asked me if I could help her out. I of course reminded her that she was not allowed anywhere near this hole and asked her why she was in it and I got the first of the responses that I will hear over and over again for the next 14 years: “The other girls were doing it.” Incident #3.

By the time we got all the girls away from the hole I looked around and realized that our new next-door neighbors had already gone inside and locked their house up tight. I don’t think I’ll ever be asked to baby-sit their kids :)

**As a side note, someone from our neighborhood (we don’t know who) actually called our city offices and complained about the hole because they were worried that kids could fall down into it. The city calmly explained that we live in a “construction zone” due to all the new houses going up and that they should supervise their children better. We all laughed about it and made jokes about watching your kids. How ironic is it that each and every one of our kids ended up in that hole?