5 oh!

So as I type, there are four squad cars, two sheriffs, a paddy wagon, and a few unmarked cruisers out front of my house. I was upstairs with Baby Daddy hanging a shelf in the nursery when we heard an enormous bang, and felt a huge thump throughout the house. Young Jonas was on the second floor, asleep in his swing, and we had snuck upstairs during this precious naptime to get some house maintenance done.
I looked out the window and saw a man in the alley crouched and holding a rifle, and immeditaely hit the deck. I told Matt to get down and said GET THE BABY and flew down the stairs as fast as I could, calling Brien,our new housemate, as I ran. Matt and I met Brien in the stairwell, and I snatched the baby from his swing, running downstairs to the kitchen andcrouching by the refrigerator with kiddo in my arms. Brien had heard it too, and had a chance to see the SWAT team outside. We all ran for the kitchen/basement, and then Brien says "take the baby and lie down in the tub." So, Matt and Jonas and I crowd into our tub (luckily, a huge jacuzzi-style) and lay low. Eventually Brien gives us the all-clear and we come out of hiding in the bathroom. Funny, because this whole thing goes down while I'm wearing this skirt that I made and a bra and flip-flops....our house is hot with no AC, so, you know, I like to hang shelves with my shirt off. Anyway, it had taken me a second the realize that the man in the alley was part of the SWAT team, not a psycho killer guy with a gun, and I had thought bullets were going to rip through our house any second.
It turns out that the renters two houses up who moved in last week were in hot water with the law. I don't exactly know what the story is, but good riddance. They were loud and obnoxious, and I don't want addicts hanging outside of the house while my kid sleeps.
We moved to Curtis Bay about seven months ago when Matt bought his first house in preperation for baby. I've lived in this area for most of my life, so it's not new to me, but this immeiate block has its...problems. Most of the people rent, and some of them are traffickers or addicts. It's only a mile or two from suburbia, but just inside the Baltimore city limits, enough to bring the bad ju-ju onto our front stoop. Rowhome life is crazy sometimes, but I think we did alright with our first real fire drill.