Today My Heart Stopped

Today the boys and I went to the zoo today our neighbor Jamie and her little girl. After looking at the animals we stopped by the playground area to let the kids play for a bit. When it was time to go Noah asked for a couple more minutes so I said okay and started getting Sam in the stroller. And then Noah was just gone. The playground there isn't that big so I wasn't worried at first and just assumed he was crawling through the tunnels. But I watched kids go in and out of the tunnels and Noah wasn't there. I looked all around the playground and couldn't find him. I started getting a little anxious so I left Sam with Jamie and walked all around the playground. No sign of him. It was really crowded at the zoo today (dozens and dozens of school field trips were there) so my calls for Noah could barely be heard at all. At this point I'm so worried that I start to cry and I left the playground area to search around, fearing that Noah left when he heard me say it was time to go the first time. I saw a zoo worker and said, "Sir, I can't find my son." I was totally crying now as I described Noah to him. By this time, several other parents had seen the panic on my face and were helping to search around and the zoo guy was really great. He just kept saying, "Don't worry, we always find our kids here." He radioed in that there was a lost child (and I started imagining myself pleading on the evening news for the safe return of my little boy) and told me to stay at the playground. Just then, one of the moms at the playground said "I found him!" and a teary Noah came running over to me. I have never squeezed that child so hard in my life. He had been in one of the tunnels on the play structure the whole time. There were so many kids there that the poor thing had just been laying in the tunnel crying while kids crawled over him but neither of us could hear the other. And since I saw the same kids go in and then out of the tunnels I had assumed he wasn't in there. Phew. The whole episode probably lasted 5 minutes but it felt like forever and I really don't think my heart beat once the whole time.