On child-proof door knob covers, and the blessing of good neighbors

I can't say I feel like 'Mom of the year' today but I know I most definitely have the neighbors of the year.

Yes, I should have had the key to the door somewhere very easily accessible and yes there should have never been a way to lock the door from the inside, I guess I'll just use that excuse my friend told me, that you lose half a brain when your first child is born. Our two year old has picked up this cute habit that she will fidget with the door knob and try to open it once she's up from her nap. She hasn't been successful in actually opening the door yet, but today she somehow managed to lock herself in (and yes, there WAS a door knob cover on the knob). I really don't know how she got her pudgy little fingers into that hole in the cover to lock the door, but the door was definitely locked and we could not find the key anywhere.

I grabbed all of the tools in our home (not many) and we tried to break the lock, then wedge it off the door. Nothing seemed to work. Surprisingly our daughter was pretty calm at this point and just thought we were playing a game. Her room is on the 2nd floor of our little one family Brooklyn home and there is a small terrace off the back of the room. My husband had the key to that back door, so he went to find a ladder to get up to the 2nd floor. He went to our neighbor, and not only did we get help with a ladder from one neighbor, the other came to the bedroom door and worked at the lock and tried to coach our daughter to unlock the door. She was calm and funny, and made me feel like not such a horrible parent. My husband and neighbor with the ladder realized that in order to not have such a huge climb they should setup the ladder on the back porch of the house on the other side. So, they knocked on the door of our neighbor on the other side and went right through the house and to the back to get up to the 2nd floor terrace. My husband got into the bedroom and our daughter (who had begun to panic a bit) was safe and happy again.

Reflecting on the excitement of the day, my husband and I realized how lucky we are to have such great neighbors, we would have never been able to get through this without them. I think there's something about these city homes packed so tightly together that allows us to really become comfortable with our neighbors. Coincidentally, I learned today about a friend outside of the city who needs to call upon the help of a neighbor but doesn't really know any of them or feel comfortable enough to ask for help. Not to say that people who live in suburbs can't count on their neighbors, but this was just one more day that made me grateful for the very small amount of space that separates me from the wonderful people I can call my neighbors.

This is an original post to NYC Moms Blog. When locking her daughters in their rooms, Dina G is a Web Project Manager and mom of 2 girls. She writes about the parallels between project management and parenting on her blog The Critical Chain.