Today I went to pick DD1 up at the bus stop at the front of our neighborhood. Usually the bus comes at about 11:30. The bus was right on time, but with a different driver: a nice, grandfatherly type. Instead of pulling up to the corner like usual, he pulled up to the side of my van and opened the door to talk to me as DD climbed down the stairs of the bus. He looked very concerned, and I knew something was wrong.

"There are .two very small boys walking along Happy Valley, and one isn't dressed. It doesn't look right. Do you know who they are?" I told him I didn't, but I'd be happy to go check it out and see if I could figure out where they belonged. He thanked me and left.

As I drove out of the neighborhood, I saw my friend Suzanne with two very small, towheaded boys. I knew from the look on her face that she didn't know who they were, and that she was worried. The wind was blowing a little bit, but it's wasn't terribly cold. Still, one was only in a shirt and a diaper, and he had a small frame, so I thought he had to be chilly.

Suzanne told me that she was driving out of the neighborhood when she saw these two little boys walking down the middle of the street. Happy Valley is a busy road. It has a mix of regular traffic and farm traffic, which means we get a lot of semis and work trucks and tractors, some of which come through very fast. The fact that they were walking through the middle of such a busy street is alarming. Add to that the fact that they were heading toward a very busy intersection, and in front of that train tracks. . . and for an immediate threat, they were directly in front of a registered sex offender's house. Suzanne pulled over and got them out of the street and onto the sidewalk in front of our neighborhood. She was trying her best to figure out their names, where they live, where they were going, anything. . . but the 2-year-old seemed to be nonverbal, and the 5-year-old had a speech issue that even Suzanne, who is a speech pathologist, couldn't completely break through.

I drove a block away to Michelle's house. Michelle knows everyone. At that point we thought we had the boys' names: Christopher and Joey. Christopher told me his mom's name was Vicki, or at least that's what I thought he said. I asked Michelle if she knew a Vicky with 2 little blonde boys, and she didn't. She suggested we call the police and I agreed. I drove back to Suzanne and the boys, and she was already on the phone with them.

Suzanne had to get to work. I told her I'd be happy to stay until the police got there. She told them my name, thanked me, and left. So there I was, sitting barefoot (what a day to not wear my shoes. I was just picking DD, up, after all. Lesson learned.) on the sidewalk with these sweet little boys. Christopher did some Spiderman moves for me and told me about some dogs, and other things that little boys encounter. I asked about his mom. Was she home? He said no. Was anyone home? Again, no. He said Mom took his sister Bridget to the doctor, and he and Joey wanted to go but Mom and Dad said no. So they ventured out on their own to find the doctor's office and the rest of their family. With more questioning, he said Grandma was at home. And then I said, "Grandma is at your house?" and he said she wasn't. Who knows with kids. I kept touching the little one's leg to make sure he wasn't getting too cold. The police were taking a long time. I wanted to stay outside with the boys, though, in case his family came around looking for them.

I was mad, though. I was prepared to ask them exactly what they were thinking, and to chronicle all of the dangers their boys had avoided, and the ones they would have run into had we not found them. Where were the police? By now the boys were playing in a little strip of grass. Christopher asked me something I couldn't understand. I answered with, "A nice policeman is going to come and help us find your mommy. He's going to help us get you home. "I don't want to go home" was all he said to me. I asked him why, and he said something about Sister at the doctor and ran off to play.

Joey tried to run back into the street several times.

My girls were in the van. They were perfect, waiting patiently. Every few minutes I'd go talk to them to make sure they were okay. I can't believe how patient they were.

A policeman finally came on a motorcycle. He asked the boys some questions but didn't get much more than I did. I told him everything I knew; he said I was welcome to go if I needed to, or if I stayed that would be fine. I wanted to stay and see what would happen to these sweet little guys.

Eventually a trooper car came. He didn't have any luck getting information from them. The boys told him they lived far, far away. He was getting ready to take them back to the station, but he didn't have carseats, so he had to call for someone to bring some.

Around 12:30, another neighborhood mom, Rachelle, pulled out of the neighborhood and over to where we were. By now the policeman had put the boys in his car to keep them warm. She asked if we'd seen two little boys and I told her yes. They weren't her boys, I know her boys. But she knew where they belonged.

She told me that another of my friends, Kim, who lived in a back corner of the neighborhood had been out looking for them. They are her next-door neighbors. The parents had taken their daughter to the doctor and left the little ones home with their Grandma, who was legally blind. The mom's name was Jamie, not Vicki. I told her we'd been there for an hour. She said Grandma had been walking around the neighborhood looking for them, but she can't see anything more than 20 feet ahead of her. In the meantime, the boys weren't even in the neighborhood anymore. So Rachelle was going to drive around and look, and Kim was out looking, too.

Then Kim pulled up. She talked to the police, told them she had carseats, and they loaded the boys in her van to go home. A policeman followed her to talk to the grandma. Rachelle stayed there and compared notes. Kim came back. She told me about the boys, and there had been trouble in the past, and they've been taken by CPS before. My heart fell.

I think of my sweet little girls. I'm not a perfect mom. I know kids escape, too; I've never had an escapee, though. But I had to wonder how long they'd been gone before it was noticed. I wondered why legally blind grandmother was watching them instead of one of the parents. I wondered why Christopher (whose name was actually Victor, I learned) didn't want to go home.

Hug your kids. Lock your doors. Teach them their address, phone numbers, at very least street name. He couldn't even tell me what color his house was.