Another Reason Why I Don't "Get the Kids Out" More Often

So, yesterday afternoon, in a flurry of inspiration to do something active, I decided to get the kids out for a walk. My plan was to hit the bike path near the house, walk down to the big park, do a lap around the road there, then head back.

This was a stupid plan that I knew was going to fail, but I was determined to try it anyway. See, there are THREE separate sets of playground equipment scattered throughout this big park and they all follow the road I wanted to make a lap around. Originally, I intended to stand firm behind my desire to get exercise and I would NOT listen to Gabe's demands to stop at the park. I would pit all of my willpower against his, and we would both experience a defining moment in our household pecking order. I would define myself as the Boss, and he would grudgingly accept the fact that he is one of my minions, destined to do my bidding through all eternity.

We made it through the first few blocks without incident. Both kids were enjoying the sights and sounds of the busy walking path and the river it follows. Then, about a block away from the park, Gabe spotted the playground equipment.

"Park! Park!" he exclaimed.

"Yep," I said. "But we're not playing at the park today. We're just out getting some exercise."

"No," he countered sternly. "We're going to the park. I want to go 'whoosh' on the slide."

"Nope. Today we're just walking," I stuck by my guns.

He went on to debate the fact for the next few minutes that it took us to pull alongside the park. Finally, once I could see the park clearly, I went back to a line of reasoning that had gotten me out of stops at the park before: "We can't go to that park. There are big kids playing there, and it's too dangerous to play in the park at the same time as big kids." This, he knew from experience, was true. Gabe has a nasty habit of hanging close to big kids--and strange big kids have a nasty habit of not paying him a lick of attention, to the point of knocking him over while they go about their business.

So we continued our walk along the loop of road, around the side that doesn't have any playground equipment. Once the first set of equipment and its big kids were out of sight, though, Gabe put them immediately out of mind and returned to his persistent pestering to stop and play.

"No," I insisted. "We're just walking today. Daddy needs some exercise."

Then he found one of the fatal flaws in my line of reasoning. "But I need exercise," he reasoned. "I play at park and 'whoosh' down slides for exercise."

Grr. I could hardly argue with that kind of logic. I couldn't claim that he didn't need exercise (though, really, he doesn't, since all of his waking hours are exercise as he climbs on everything in our house, runs around in circles, and jumps over anything that's on the ground), and I would never suggest that he SHOULDN'T get some exercise because, frankly, I would love for him to grow up with a better attitude about physical activity than I have myself.

"OK," I relented, establishing the pecking order/minion status in our household beyond a shadow of doubt. "If there are no big kids at the other big park with the sand, we'll stop."

And, of course, there weren't any big kids. At least not at first. There wasn't any reasonable out for me, so we unloaded from the stroller.

Let me take another moment to further lament the purchase of this stroller. I strongly believe now that it was not designed with the moving of children in mind. Or, perhaps, the people who engineered it had never had children of their own and they figured that children would not ride in it once they weighed more than, say, twenty pounds. With a light load, the stroller works pretty well. But, then, anything with wheels that didn't weigh very much would move pretty well. Once children are added--specifically, two children that weigh somewhere around seventy pounds together--the dynamic of the stroller is inexorably altered. It becomes unwieldy and awkward. If the surface being traveled upon has even the slightest incline to one side or the other (as all roads do, except in the very middle where it's impossible to walk without causing a traffic stir, and many spots in sidewalks do, especially when crossing driveways), the stroller lists down that incline with such blind determination that anything less than total dedication to keeping the stroller on target will lead to a two child pile up in the nearest gutter or ditch. Constantly fighting the stroller back from one direction or the other is exhausting work that completely detracts from the overall joyful experience of going for a walk--if one is so inclined to find joy in walking.

I hate that stroller. God how I hate it. I'm not sure I've ever hated an inanimate object as much as I do this stroller.

Anyway, we stopped at the park and unloaded. Gabe hit the playground equipment and I put Norah down for a little time in the sand. As soon as Gabe took his first step up the stairs, though, two big kids appeared out of nowhere and climbed up the stairs, overtaking Gabe and commandeering the high ground. Bollocks.

So, now my job had changed. With only Gabe and Norah there, all I had to do was focus on Norah and her handfuls of sand--to make sure they didn't go in her mouth, because, I swear, she loves the taste of sand more than anything else in the world right now--and keep Gabe in the corner of my eye so I could direct him past the parts of the equipment that were beyond his age level. Now I had to keep Gabe out of harm's way so he didn't accidentally get pushed off some twelve foot tall playground equipment. This meant carrying Norah and shadowing Gabe from the ground, so I did just that.

Gabe decided that he wanted to try one of the big slides. To date, Gabe hasn't made it down any of the big slides. I don't think he's scared, exactly, but, for some reason, he always stops himself right before going down the slide and decides that he'd rather be doing something else. This time, unfortunately, he didn't stop himself until he'd already slid a few feet down the slide, where he jammed his legs into the side, twisted himself up, and clung to the sides with his hands for dear life.

"Help! Help!" he wailed.

And so I was faced with a dilemma. I had a child in my arms and another jammed in a slide. I didn't like my chances of being able to keep a hold of Norah while prising Gabe free of the slide, and I certainly couldn't put her down way up at the top of the equipment long enough to get at Gabe, so I had to put her down on the sand. I did so and sprinted up the equipment stairs to pull Gabe free.

While I did this, three more big kids appeared, again from nowhere--or, possibly, they slid in from an alternate dimension. I hear big kids can do that now with all their modern gadgetry. I think there's an app for that.

I escorted Gabe down through the bustle of kids, back to Norah on the ground. When we got there, I found her on all fours with her face down in the sand. She wasn't crying and, in fact, seemed quite pleased to be buried cheek deep in the sand that was still damp from the past few days' worth of rain, so I guessed that she had purposefully put herself in that position and hadn't, instead, tried to stand and faceplanted, which I suppose was better, at least from a standpoint of producing a spectacle of wailing for everyone to see. I pulled her up and her face was caked with sand. Actually, her entire front half was caked with sand. She must have laid down flat on the ground before raising up to her hands and knees and putting her face in the dirt.

"That's enough of that, then," I decided, and I escorted them back to the stroller, instructed Gabe to load up, then cleaned Norah up the best I could before putting her in. I probed around in her mouth with my finger to try and excavate as much earth as I could, then handed her sippy cup to her in the hopes that she could wash the rest of it down.

Gabe protested, but this time I wouldn't bend. "We can play in the sandbox when we get home," I assured him. I didn't want to do that, obviously, but it was the only thing I could think of to keep him happy. Once playing outside was on the table, nothing but enough time outside would prevent a tantrum of three year old proportions, and spending time in the sandbox seemed like a lesser evil at this point.

Once home, we played in the sandbox for fifteen minutes or so before Libby got home--thankfully, she came home early since she'd gone into work early that morning, so I didn't have to deal with them alone for very long. Nonetheless, before Libby got home, Norah managed to put at least six handfuls of sand into her mouth (and one little rock, which I found stranded like a small island in the middle of a puddle of pooh this morning--her body hasn't made a very gracious switch from formula to milk, I'm afraid). Perhaps she is part chicken and she needs the sand to help her digest her food or whyever they do it (I think it might have to do with egg manufacturing, actually, but whatever).

After Libby arrived, we decided to give the kids a Hillbilly Bath in their little swimming pool. What the hell, we thought. We had the warm water already as it had filled up with the rain and it was pretty warm outside, and our back yard is shielded from the view of the rest of our neighbors. I grabbed their shampoo and Libby lathered them up.


Then, to complete our white trash evening, we decided to feed the kids in their underwear/diapers because, well, they'd already had a bath and I didn't figure it made much sense to dirty a new set of clothes before changing them into their PJs.

Notice the trail of food down her belly. She had chicken fingers and tater tots. When Libby changed her diaper before bed time, we found a chunk of chicken and half a tater tot in the front of her diaper. Probably Norah thought she'd save it for later.

And so now you see another reason why it's best not to get your kids out for "exercise." It will inevitably lead to social decline. In one afternoon, we descended into the realm of white trash, and all it took was some damp sand and a playground slide. So, be warned, it could happen to you, too!