Alex learned the word Gun today.

We live on a fairly busy street. So much so that I'm afraid to let Alex play in the yard (front or back) supervised or not, for fear of her being run down by a car. Practically everyday we hear sirens and see firetrucks and ambulances driving by our front window. Yesterday Michael and Danielle came to visit while Tyler was studying at school. We were all lounging in the living room when I heard some sirens and told Alex to look out the window. Sure enough we saw a cop car driving rather quickly down the street. I told Alex to keep looking as there would probably be an ambulance following soon, but what actually came next caught us all by surprise.
As I'm sitting contently rocking my little baby, I see a man run through our front yard out of the corner of my eye, and then I hear Danielle say "He's got a gun!" Followed by more sirens and then through our open kitchen door I hear "GET DOWN, GET DOWN!" In my mind, in those 10 seconds I'm thinking "Some lunatic is running from the cops and going to have a shootout in our driveway, my side door is open, which he is going to barge through at any minute and hold us hostage because for some reason he is trying to climb over our neighbors shed, hence the 'get down'." I tell Michael to close the door as I'm trying to hunch down by the window to protect us from gunfire, while simultaneously look through the window to see whats happening.
Within minutes there are about 10 cops standing around a guy laying face down in our neighbors front yard, cop cars EVERYWHERE and a fire truck and ambulance blocking the road. Some witnesses park in our driveway and Michael goes out to get the story. Turns out some guy was majorly speeding on a bullet bike and caught the attention of some cops who tried to pull him over, with little success. By the time they reached our neighborhood it seems he had quite the little chase going on, and the cop car zooming by our window was a cop trying to get ahead and cut him off. So the guy either crashes or ditches his bike and tries to go on foot, which is where our front yard comes into play. The cop who had driven ahead parked right by our house, got out when he saw the guy on foot and ran to head him off, with his gun drawn. The culprit was tazed and ended up being taken away on a stretcher.
This was when Tyler called to be picked up from school. He ended up getting a ride from Kara because of the plethora of vehicles blocking our driveway. Crazy!

As I am writing this, Alex is sitting in the rocking chair, with her baby doll in her lap, legs held in the air, asking for a wipe so she can clean the poop off of her baby's bottom. I gave her the wipe, which she proceeded to use the on the baby, and then to clean the rocking chair.