the key to nap time

Background:
Since Addie's been in a big girl bed, she can/does get out of bed when she's supposed to be napping or in bed for the night. The past few weeks she's been fighting going to and staying in bed. She claims to need to go potty like 4 times or whatever else she can think of to avoid the inevitable. Hoping it's a phase, but frustrating nonetheless. Jed put the bathroom doorknob on her door so that we can lock her in at night, because a couple of times she got out when we were downstairs and didn't know it for a while. We also were concerned about her escaping at night and going downstairs when we were sleeping and getting into who knows what.



Flash forward to nap time 2 days ago....she had fallen asleep for 5 minutes in the car just before. Never a good thing. A year ago, heck six months ago, if she did that I could totally take her up to bed and she'd stay asleep or go right back to sleep. Sigh...those were the days....Well now she wakes up. If I was smart I'd have left her in the garage for an hour. I decided to be not so smart and took her upstairs. She immediately started to cry and then went down the laundry list of excuses to stall nap time. We did the whole nap time routine of songs and potty time and what not....like 3 times. I finally told her if she got out of bed again, I'd just lock the door and not come back till nap time was over. (Yep that's right, new sheriff in town, tough mom bit)
Of course she got out again, so I locked the door and went downstairs. I kept hearing her trying to open the door and bang on it and she'd yell now and then too. I tried to ignore it and told myself she would learn that I was serious if I saw this through.

Well crap. I forgot something. My kid? Oh uh she's some sort of genius ninja or something. I was sitting on the couch working on my laptop and looked up and saw her STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. Uh, what the?! It startled me and I asked "Addie what are you doing down here??"

"Oh, I just came downstairs to say hi to mommy" Oh, right, of course. Perfect explanation.

I ran up the stairs expecting to see a broken doorknob or who knows, a kicked in door jam? Well you know what I found on the floor....um THIS


Addie followed me in and saw the perplexed look on my face. I was trying figure out if it was a piece of her crib or what when she said, "Oh there's the key" uh WHAT?

Then, afraid of the answer, I asked "Addie, how did you open your door?"

"I just used that key and locked the door" Ohhh, of course. Once again, perfect explanation. Um, HOW? I was baffled. So apparently she shook the door enough that the "key" on top of the door jam fell down and my kid thought, oh sweet I'll just let myself out now.

I kept thinking I was crazy and that she had just jiggled it enough to open. Then I closed the door and locked it and without saying a word handed her the key. I proceeded to watch my TWO YEAR OLD unlock her door in about 5 seconds flat.

For. The. Love

So, I'm thinking that whole lock her up when she's sixteen thing may not work ;) Lucky for her I was so shocked and laughing so hard I couldn't even be mad that she had broken out of her room. Needless to say....there's no key on the door jam anymore.