Minding Madeleine.

I'm sure I'm the only one who hadn't heard about Madeleine McCann till yesterday. For anyone else living under a rock, she is the British girl who apparently went missing from her vacation apartment when her parents were eating at a tapas bar on the other side of their Portuguese resort (The tapas bar is "120 metres away" from their apartment for those who can think in such crazy Euro dimensions). There has been much judgment of and finger pointing at the parents: for leaving their children (they also have two year old twins who were in the apartment at the time) alone in an apartment, for leaving the front door unlocked, for drinking several bottles of wine with their friends at dinner and now, for possibly being involved in bringing her harm.

Obviously, if they had anything to do with bringing her harm, they deserve the worst wrath of man and the legal system and I hope they suffer unspeakable anguish for the rest of their days.

But reading the story sent chills down my spine because we've done something similar while on vacation; although I would argue that we took important measures to ensure the safety of our precious charge, things that the McCann's really should have as well.

When we took our family trip to Yosemite last April, we brought along our baby monitor. We were staying at a nice hotel and had the benefit of a room on the first floor, close to the elevators. We quickly discovered that Z's early bedtime and our group's late dinners were on a collision course for disaster and we decided to feed her quickly, put her down in her crib in our room (with the baby MONITOR on and the door LOCKED and not on the ground floor) and come back down to enjoy the rest of a leisurely dinner. It was, quite simply, heaven. We felt brilliant. We could hear (on our MONITOR) that she was fine in her crib in our (LOCKED) room (in the same building as us) and we didn't have to take turns going to bed at 7 pm. We could hang out and drink and laugh and enjoy ourselves.

There were a few people who looked askance at our monitor, though. Like, "Is your baby in the room BY HERSELF?". Well, yes, she was by herself. But we were in the same building, we could hear everything happening in the room (which was, thankfully, nothing but snoring most of the time) and did I mention that she was safely in a crib behind a LOCKED door?

But I guess their point was valid. What if someone HAD come into the room? What if something HAD happened to her? It would have taken us a few minutes to run out of the dining room, scramble up the stairs, unlock the door and go in. I know this because a few times she lost her pacifier and needed it quickly replaced. Were we too far away? Were we negligent?

Deep down, a selfish little part of me almost hopes that the parents had something to do with Madeleine's disappearance. That way I won't feel too guilty about leaving Z in our hotel room last spring.