Eyes in the back of my head

The sun was just coming up, and Jacob should have been asleep. But the cries seemed to be coming from somewhere other than his crib. I pressed my ear to his door and heard, very clearly, and very loudly, "Uh oh, Mommy. Uh oh."

I gently turned the knob and slowly pushed the door open. Or at least, I tried to push the door open. I was thwarted by the two-year-old standing on the other side of it.

He stared up at me, those big brown eyes admitting his misdeed. He pointed at his crib.

"Uh oh, Mommy."

"Did you climb out of your crib?" I asked.

"Yesh," he replied, toddling back over to his bed and hoisting his leg in a pitiful attempt to show me how. Getting in proved a lot harder than getting out, apparently, which is why he was calling for help.

I put him back in his crib, gave him a stern warning to never do it again, and told him I'd come back to get him when it was time to get up.

He escaped twice more before the realization hit me that my words were not strong enough to keep him in place.

When Abby learned to crawl out of her bed, she used the skill only to retrieve misplaced toys before scaling the outside wall of the crib and climbing back in.

When Caleb mastered the skill, he used it to stand up on the ledge of the crib and launch himself six feet across the room in the middle of the night, breaking both bones in his arm.

Jacob tends more toward the latter than the former. We decided to take some extreme precautions.

And that is how this frugal mom, having entered the journey of parenthood with nary a baby monitor, and having lived without one until acquiring a used monitor when baby #3 came along, found herself paying full price for a top of the line video monitor. Because, as the hubby pointed out, it's probably cheaper than another broken arm.

And utilizing the night vision on my new toy, I can scan the room to keep an electronic eye on both my baby and my escape artist. And when Jacob does begin to lift his body over the edge of the crib and I can't dash in to catch him in time, I can simply speak into the microphone and my voice fills his room: "Jacob, get down!"

He doesn't like it, as evidenced by the evil looks he's taken to giving the camera when it barks the order at him. But he obeys, and that's the important part.

In can't decide if this is the laziest or the best purchase I've ever made. Either way, I love it.