Headline news = Paranoid mom

The news here has been flooded with a 6 year old girl (Hanna Mack) who was found missing when her mother went to wake her for school and then discovered hung in a garage not to far from here. They have the dude that did it in custody. The news had interviews of other parents who express their sympathy, like most would.

Then of course you get your know-it-alls, the ones that make comments like "How do you not know your child is missing?"; "How can you go all night and not discover your child stolen?"

I watched the know-it-alls, and thought: "my god, I wouldn't know. I check on my kids before I go to sleep, but if something happens while I'm sleeping...I wouldn't know til morning!"

I got angry that these know-it-alls thought that parents should just keep waking up in the middle of the night to make sure their children are still there...but at the same time I felt guilty because I would be that mother that didn't know til morning that they're missing.

So I had this in my mind all night (i'm proned to paranoia).

Well, this morning I had to take HB to work...again...and usually he runs around getting ready and I'm the one that grabs the kids from their beds and puts them in the car, it's been that way for most of the 7 and a half years we've been parents. Today HB thought he would change it up on me by him grabbing the kids and putting them in the car.

I threw on my pants and walked over the Sissy's room, where Nana decided to sleep last night. I stood in the doorway in horror, seeing nothing but an empty bed and an empty sleeping bag, my eyes darted from bed to sleeping bag and back again trying to figure out why they were empty. The first thought that comes to my mind is of course that they've been stoled. So i go to the window in a panic rush and seen it was still locked which left me confused with more urgency.

Thankfully, before I started screaming through the house that my children were missing (and some remember how I got when I lost Nana in the crowded Markt Platz in Germany during a midnight fest, I obviously found her), I decided to see if they were in the car. Thankfully that's where they were and I saved myself the humilation of looking like a maniac and waking the neighborhood.

Lesson of the day: You shouldn't change routine when the mother is highly susceptible to panic.