I wanted an easy day

Because I wanted to catch some extra sleep to make up for the unexpected early-morning feeding, I reset the alarm for 25 minutes later than usual.

Bad idea. On picture day, nonetheless.

So Sam and I got up late and rushed around to get ready. I fed her dry Apple Jacks from a cup for breakfast. And her best friend Jaylyn stopped by unexpectedly to give me flowers she had picked at the bus stop (where we should have been by then, clearly).

So I'm trying to keep an eye on Sam and Jaylyn, who are playing dollhouse while Sam chomps down her sugary breakfast, get myself dressed and get Noah -- who is of course sound asleep now that I need him to get up -- ready to leave.

I managed all of this in four to six minutes.

We all darted out the door and chugged to the bus stop, where the bus proceeded to be about five minutes late.

Sam and Jaylyn got on, Noah and I waved bye-bye and we parents wished each other a good day.

I headed back to my house, keeping Noah wrapped up in my jacket because I hadn't had time to grab him one, and turned the knob to my back door.

Locked.

I was not happy.

But there's one door from our basement that we have a bad tendency of not locking, so I didn't panic. I lugged Mr. I-Now-Weigh-18-Pounds back down the porch steps, in through the basement -- where I successfully dodged a tractor, a kiddie bike and a plethora of other stuff -- and waded through the laundry on our basement floor.

I trudged up the stairs, baby still on my hip, and turned the knob.

Locked.

Now I was pissed.

I've offered advice before on this blog of things I don't recommend. Let me add another to that list: Do not stand precariously on steep basement stairs, hold an 18-pound child on your left hip, try to pry the latch of a door back with a screwdriver you're holding in your right hand and throw your back against a locked door -- while wearing heels.

Most importantly, do not do this more than once.

I finally spread out a blanket beside the dirty laundry on the floor of the basement, plopped Noah down, and spent about 30 minutes trying to dig out the wood around the latch and the doorknob.

No, it didn't work.

(The hedge clippers I eventually switched to didn't do nearly as well as I thought they would, by the way.)

So I swallowed my pride, wrapped Noah back up in my jacket and plodded on up to my neighbor's house to seek male assistance. He very nicely listened as I explained how I had been trying to break into my own house.

"Did you try a credit card?" he asked.

"Well, no," I said, "because my credit cards are all in the house."

"Oh yeah," he said. "Well, are you late for work?"

"Yup," I said.

"Did you call and tell them what happened?"

"Uh, no, because my phone's in the house," I said.

"Oh, yeah," he replied.

This, I'll admit, did not give me much faith in the guy I had chosen to be my savior.

He tried for a few minutes with the same screwdriver I had used, he turned down the offer of the hedge clippers, and just when I asked if he thought a crow bar or pry bar would work, he said, "Hey, do you have a tire iron in your trunk?"

"Actually, yes, I know I do," I said. "And one of the doors of my car is unlocked."

So my neighbor -- who I discovered is a mechanic, hence his thinking of using car-related tools -- broke me into my house this morning using a tire iron.

Of course, last night I had chosen not to do my daily clean-up routine, so the playroom was trashed, the kitchen table had cat puke in the dead center, and the dirty dishes were crawling out of the sink.

My savior did not stick around more than a minute once we were inside. I'm hoping that was because he knew I needed to get going and not because of my poor housekeeping skills.

By this point, patient baby Noah had been awake for about an hour and had had exactly nothing to eat.

Actually, I take that back: I discovered the hard way that he had somehow gotten a piece of plaster/concrete/stone while he was in the basement and was still gnawing on it with his baby gums. I swooped that out of his mouth as he was coughing and gagging.

Anyway, Noah made it to the sitter (whom I warned to watch for vomiting or signs of belly pain in case he had ingested any part of that basement substance), I made it to work, Sam got her first real school picture taken, and my husband thankfully did not yell at me for ruining the door and its frame.

I'm pretty sure I need a Mommy day off after that episode.