A Seatbelt Story

This morning, the kids and I were driving up to my in-law's house, which is about 45 minutes away from our house. It's a trip we take at least once a week and considering how bad construction can be this time of year, we were cruising pretty fast. We were about 10 minutes from their house when Hannah said, "Mommy! Mommy!" from the back seat. I peeked back and saw that she had gotten a seat belt wrapped around her neck! Some of you might be asking how this is possible so let me explain. Hannah's car seat doesn't use the regular shoulder-strap seat belt that is on the captain's chair of our Tahoe. It uses the "latch system", which means it hooks right into little hooks that are on the seat. Therefore, the regular seat belt goes unused for that seat. Every now and then, I'll notice that Hannah has grabbed the seat belt and pulled it out, usually wrapping it around her hand or thinking it's funny to pull it out and watch it suck itself back into the wall of the truck. Every time I see this, I explain to her that she shouldn't touch the seat belt because it could get wrapped around her neck and that would be a bad thing. I thought we were in the clear since she hadn't attempted to play with it in weeks, however, here we were on a sunny Wednesday morning, pulled over on 35W (a major highway in the Twin Cities) with a seat belt wrapped around her neck. I figured, I'd hop out of the car, unhook it from her neck and we'd be on our merry way. Unfortunately, the seat belt had LOCKED itself, and wouldn't let out any slack for me to loosen it around Hannah's neck. My first thought was that there must be some trick to seat belts that I've never learned. So, I called Chris and asked him. He suggested letting a little bit of the seat belt go back in, which would hopefully unlock it. That didn't do it, and now it was tighter around my poor two-year old's neck. I ended up asking Chris if he cared if we cut it (he said that was fine), but since I didn't have anything to cut it with, I decided to call the police. Imagine me, holding my hand in between the seat belt and Hannah's neck (so it wouldn't choke her), standing on the side of the highway calling 911. I was almost laughing at the situation because it was so crazy!! The 911 operator even asked me "How is that possible?" when I explained what had happened, and she ended up transferring my call to Highway Patrol. That operator told me that an officer would be by soon. Sure enough, about five minutes later, two squads and a highway-helper pull up. By this point, Hannah was still doing fine---no tears, being very patient---and Caleb, who said he had to go potty a minute before, was patiently watching the scene unfold. The officers were as baffled as I was as to how to get Hannah out of this predicament without cutting the seat belt, and sure enough, that's what they ended up doing. I was able to laugh as I was pulling back onto the highway, and I'm glad that no one was seriously hurt. The long and the short of it is that we're down one seat belt in our truck now and we'll eventually have to get it replaced. It certainly made for an interesting start to the day, I'll tell you that!! :)