have you ever...

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had the utter horror as a parent had one of your children missing? My son, when he was 3, he is 4 now was missing for about a half hour. Maybe longer, I don't really know. See what had happened is I had just had my last baby. She was 4 days old (17 months old now). I was home trying to nurse her and my husband was outside with the other 2 kids and my other daughter was having a nap. I was having a difficult time nursing the baby, she was fussing, really hungry but not latching on. My son came in the house and needed his nose blown. I had no Kleenex near me and I was just finally getting the baby to settle down and eat so I told him to go outside and get his daddy to blow his nose. Well he went outside. A few minutes later my husband and daughter came in the house. I said, where's Joshua? He said, I thought he was with you. I told my husband I had sent him outside to get his nose blown, and didn't he find you? He said he had gone to the mailbox with Kaitlin, which was down the road a bit. So my husband went outside and looked all over the yard. He came back and told me he couldn't find him and that I had to call 911 and he was going to talk to all our neighbors. We live in a rural setting and on a highway, not a busy one but a highway nonetheless. So I called 911, then I called my best friend, could hardly get the words out I was crying so hard and told her that Joshua was missing. Neighbors came and looked for him, my close friends came, my best friends husband works down the road from us and he left his work and came to our house and people back at his work were putting together a search team. Of course in all this time the police arrived to and were looking for him. Somebody said they had seen a truck stop and pick someone up, which made my heart drop even further, as you could imagine! Minutes later the police got a call, someone had called in that they had a boy at their house and he matched the description of my son. He was a few houses down from our house. What had happened was that when I told him to go outside and get daddy to blow his nose he couldn't find him and went looking for him. Somehow my husband and my son's paths didn't cross and he ended up on the highway. The truck had stopped and asked him if he was lost and did he need a ride home? He drove him to the house a few doors down from ours and asked him if this was his house, he said yes even though it wasn't. It was a horrible experience, I hope I never have to go through anything like that again. I'm just glad that he was safe. He could have been taken by the driver. He could have gotten hit by a car, a number of terrible things could have happened. I was so thankful for my friends and family in our time of need how they dropped everything and came. My best friend runs a greenhouse business and her parents work there too and they dropped everything closed up shop and came to look, help and support us. I hope no parent has to experience this. My son still takes about when he was lost and my oldest daughter too.