Once again, the
guilt overwhelmed me the other day as I had anticipated a semi-long evening run
all day while at work. You see, I’m
currently training for a half-marathon…you know, the type of activity that
screams I’m far too lazy to train for a
full marathon, but I’m way better than everyone that only runs 5Ks! Completely kidding, I don’t judge people who
don’t work out…most of the time! Anyway, you can imagine that training for a
half marathon in only 2 months requires a bit of a time commitment, time that I
had been spending away from my kiddos. Adam has been supportive in my quest and
has been available to be home whenever I’ve needed to take one of my scheduled
runs, but that doesn’t take away from the guilt mom’s often have when they aren’t
spending enough quality time with their babies. I realized that I hadn’t been
around enough when both kids were clinging to Adam and wanting to sit on his
lap in the evenings rather than mine. As annoying as it gets sometimes when
your children hang all over you, it’s pretty disconcerting when you realize
that they don’t want to hang on you
anymore. So, to make myself feel a little better, I asked Benji if he wanted to
go for a run with me. This perked his interest, but he wasn’t completely sure
if he wanted to tag along until I told him that we could stop at the playground
on the way home. A little bribe here and there to regain the title of favorite
parent never hurt anyone! I got myself dressed in my running gear, Ben put on
his favorite pair of cowboy boots and then climbed into my running stroller.
And….we were
off. As we rolled out of the driveway, a fine mist fell over us. I assumed that
the skies would clear and we would be fine, so we continued on our venture. It
had been a while since I had taken Benji running with me, and it wasn’t until then
that I realized he’d grown a little. As if pushing the 30+ pound stroller wasn’t
enough, we successfully added 30+ more pounds to it with my lil man. I’m failing to remember why we have
nicknamed him Tiny. Before we reached the end of our street I had changed
my plan of a semi-long run, to a condensed run with muscle building and weight
resistance. As we strolled on with what seemed like the speed of a sloth, the
mist turned into a drizzle. As we
rounded mile 2ish, the drizzle turned into a rain….and around mile 3 as we
finally reached the playground, the rain had turned into a downpour. Hoping
that Big Tiny had changed his mind about the playground, I let him make the
decision to stop and play or continue home to get out of the rain. Of course he
wanted to stop and play….he’s 3. Since I was already dripping with rainwater I
convinced myself that there was no harm in staying to play, we couldn’t really
get any more wet than we were already. So we stayed. Benji was so excited, as
usual, about the slides and he asked me to slide with him. Being the little
daredevil that he is, he chose the biggest, curly cue slide to go down. We both
climbed to the top, him in his cowboy boots and me in my soggy tennis shoes.
Ben went first. He reached the bottom and called for me to come down, so I did…and
at 104 mph I slid down that thing, nearly flew out of one of the turns and
bruised my elbow along the way. I felt like I was an extra in the movie Cool Runnings. (If you don’t know what
that is, look it up, I’m disappointed in you!) As the end of the slide came
into sight I braced myself and my feet for the landing…but my soggy feet were
not prepared to stop a body flying at 104 mph. Being the age that I am, and
through the many experiences I’ve had in my life with common water, I should
have anticipated that the slide would be much more slippery when wet, but I
didn’t. Needless to say, I flew out of the end of that slide about 3 feet,
landed flat on my butt, covered myself in woodchips, and woke up the next day
with a bruised hip…and ego! Ben thought it was absolutely hilarious and laughed
the entire way home threatening to tell his daddy that “mommy fell on her butt!”
He was right though, it was pretty hilarious and if anyone saw me, besides Ben,
I’m sure they also got a good laugh out of it. Sometimes as a parent you have
to remember how to be a kid, at least once in a while…I promise it’ll make for
some amazing memories, and maybe just a few bruises!
 |
| This is not the exact piece of playground equipment that we were using, however the actual slide itself is the same. And....that's enough laughing. |
No comments:
Post a Comment