“Seriously?! How did you even know how to do that?!”

In our dining room, we have a small, apartment sized deep freeze. We got it to have on hand when L was younger. It gave us more space for storing breast milk and the pureed baby food cubes she ate when she was much younger.

Last night we went grocery shopping. When we got home we put everything away, including the 2L of cookies and cream ice cream that I’d given into buying. It was on sale! (Plus, I have absolutely no impulse control, so ice cream is always welcome in my home).

About 3 hours after grocery shopping was finished, I got myself a waffle cone, opened up the freezer and took out the ice cream. It still felt cool when I opened the lid, so I thought nothing of it until the scoop hit the ice cream.

“Hey, C (fiance) – why the hell is our ice cream like soup?”

“What?!”

“Our ice cream. It’s effing soupy!”

I’m standing by the freezer trying to figure this out, then little L comes over and clues me in. She’s got her alphabet magnets pasted all over the front of our freezer, and down at the very bottom is a temperature dial. You turn that, and the freezer will get colder, or turn off completely depending on which way you turn it. It is this model, so you can see where the dial is at a convenient toddler play level (bottom right):

She is playing with her letters while I’m trying to sort it out and then says “That!”. I look down and she’s playing with the dial. I notice it is in the “off” position.

Fuuuuuu…… Ok calm down. It couldn’t have been off for that long, right?

So we’re now desperately checking all of our frozen meats, vegetables, etc. to see if they’ve gone past the point of no return.

Thankfully, I think we’re ok.

Lesson learned. Time to put some duct tape over that dial, and for mom to bust out the hidden emergency chocolate.