Finn gave me quite a scare yesterday morning.

Our house is built on a slope, so that the main living area is on the “upper” level, and the backyard is on the lower level.  The garage is under the house, and the driveway is in the backyard.  The backyard/driveway can only be accessed by going down a flight of stairs, which is separated from the kitchen by a heavy door on a hydraulic hinge, and through the “basement” (which is only sort of a basement since it’s not all underground).

Anyway, so yesterday morning I was rushing to get the kids out the door and to school.  I ran downstairs to pull my truck around to the front of the house (much easier to do this than to herd all the kids downstairs).  I came back in the house and started sending the kids out the front door to the truck, and suddenly Finn was nowhere to be found.  I looked in every room upstairs and he was nowhere.  I looked out in the front yard (which, fortunately, is surrounded by a picket fence) thinking maybe he slipped out with the other kids.  Nope.  Panic started to set in.  And then it hit me . . . what if he somehow caught the door at the top of the stairs when I ran down before it closed all the way?  Suddenly I’m having terrible visions of him lying at the bottom of the stairs.

I run down the stairs, and there he is, in the basement, crying at the window that overlooks the driveway.  Poor little bug.  But unscathed.  I have no idea how he managed to get down all those stairs without . . . well, I don’t even want to think about it.  I will say that he definitely does NOT yet walk down stairs, nor does he go down backwards.  I’ve seen him scoot down on his bottom, frontways, step by step, but only on the front porch steps, and there are only three steps there.

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In other news, tomorrow morning Finn will have his long-awaited and many-times-rescheduled sedated echo, which I first mentioned way back here.  He will be put under general anesthesia, apparently, and so cannot have anything by mouth after midnight tonight.  I have to have him at the hospital TWO HOURS before the scheduled time of the procedure, and I think that’s the part I’m dreading the most – having to sit there waiting with a cranky, hungry baby for at least two hours.  I’m not expecting any big surprises from the echo, and am hoping to hear that his ASD is closed so we can put all this heart business behind us for good, although I also don’t want to take anything for granted.  So, we’ll see.

And next week he goes under again to have brand spankin’ new tubes put in his ears.