I feel compelled to share something this morning. The topic... hot car deaths. The reason I want to share is to maybe provide some food for thought to those who think it could NEVER happen to them.

Let me provide a scenario here, and I will try to paint it extra bright for those in the back. And, yes, this is a real life scenario that happened this morning.
I took Reece to school, like any typical weekday morning. The variant here is that Bailey woke up before I left, so she came along. Not the norm. At least 95% of the time she is still asleep and stays home with Daddy while I do drop off. Ok...no big deal, right? Except, it's not routine.
Now let me tell you about the littlest. She loathes the car seat. Like the norm for her is to scream her head off the entire time she's in the car until she falls asleep, but that's really only on longer trips. Today, she fell asleep. After talking to her for awhile, and then absolute silence, I saw that she had conked out somewhere in the midst of the two mile long line at Starbucks. Very, very rare occurrence for her to fall asleep on such a short drive. So, again, not your normal morning.
When I finally got home I got all of my stuff together and did my dummy check to make sure there wasn't a kiddo in the car. Not because I really thought there was, but because I started that routine long ago. After hearing about all the hot car deaths and knowing that they can happen to anybody that is human. Much to my surprise, there is little Bailey sleeping away.
Did I almost forget her because she isn't that important to me and I was distracted? No! Absolutely not!! There is nothing more important than my kiddos. This isn't about important or not, this is about change in routine.
1. I do not normally have her in the car with me when I do drop off/pick up for school.
2. She fell asleep and of course wasn't making a peep.
Add those together, as well as the lack of sleep that has put me into auto pilot, and I would have followed routine and just walked into the house without one of the most important things. No, I wasn't distracted from my phone. I didn't even have it out. Because I added the dummy check into my routine long ago she wasn't left in the car for even a minute.
I feel for those families that have been ripped apart by hot car deaths. It can happen to anybody. So, before you think it won't happen to you...do yourself a favor and implement a dummy check. Just in case.