A nice way to get some exercise and fresh air is to take a nice walk around the neighborhood. Now that the weather is warmer, its something I really want to do every night and the kids even want to as well. Not often we all agree on something so when we do, I'm going for it. I've been using my "Sit N' Stand" stroller so I can blast down the sidewalk as quickly as I like and the kids just go for the ride.
*This is not me, those are not my children and
we don't have a backdrop like this anywhere in our lives.
AKA I don't know these fools.
For the most part, this has worked well for all except when the dog gets mad that we've left him behind and then jumps the fence to catch up with us. I won't even get into what is involved in trying to corrale a dog who is hard of hearing back into the yard while there are squirrels and people and other dogs all around to distract him.
Since I've been babysitting my infant niece some nights, the new arrangement was that my daughter's spot in the front would be replaced with the baby's car seat (as shown in the inset of the above photo). As a result, my daughter then had to move to the "standing" section of the stroller, while my 5 year old has to walk. The 5 year old is fine with this. I'm fine with this. The baby doesn't even know anything about anything anyway and my daughter, well, she's not so sure she likes this. She's been having some major jealousy of the new baby as it is, so since the baby took her spot - even though she always wanted to stand in the back where her brother was anyway - it's now become a major issue for her. She would rather just walk than have to sit or stand in the back. It's just a matter of principle for her I'm sure. She only wanted to be back there when she wasn't allowed. Now that the baby "stole her seat" she is staging a protest about everything involving the stroller and the struggle and argument usually carries on throughout the entire duration of our walk. It's really annoying.
That's when I had it easy. For whatever reason, we've left the Sit N' Stand out in the elements for a couple weeks. Because of my intense fear of spiders, I'm now convinced that I can never touch that thing again. When I want to go for a walk now, I ask my sister to leave her stroller with me.
The good news about our first walk with the baby's stroller is that it's a really nice stroller that handles beautifully and it's all new and clean. The baby managed to have a nice nap and the weather was just perfect. The bad news was just about everything else that happened.
Walking with the baby in her own stroller has played host to a whole new set of problems. Now both kids have to walk. I asked my husband to come along for the walk this time thinking it would be nice for us all to do something together. (no clue where my teenager could have been through any of this BTW)
ANYHOW, here we go down the road and my son is out in the front pretending he is a car and bouncing over the bumps of the sidewalk like he's got the suspension of a Cadillac. He looks downright insane doing it, but he seems to enjoy it so we let him*. (*by this I mean we totally give up telling him to walk right.)
I'm pushing the stroller and my daughter running full speed. She's totally ignoring us as we both call for her to stop before she falls. After telling her 597 times in 8 seconds to stop running, she fell and skinned her knee. Here come the screams.
I may have mentioned before that my daughter's cry is like no other. He "normal cry" is the loudest most piercing, shrill screams you will ever hear in your life. Anything from a dropped cookie to a severed toe conjures up the same deafening symphony of screams. It's really unbelievable. Needless to say, no matter where we are, if she starts crying, people from everywhere are staring at us wondering what horrible thing we did to this child to make her scream in such a way that makes your blood run cold.
Her not listening and now screaming drives my husband to start yelling at her. "We told you this was going to happen but you don't listen!!". His yelling at her makes me get upset with him because to me "she's just a baby" and needs her boo-boos kissed. He picks her up and carries her for the next few feet trying to get her to stop screaming, while he continues to yell at her. Because all of this isn't enough of a scene, now I chime in and start whisper screaming at him to please stop yelling at her because it's embarrassing. Meanwhile, my son who has grown immune to this sort of thing has happily run so far a head that he doesn't hear me calling for him to come back. Now I have to start yelling for him to even hear me, while my daughter is still screaming her lungs out. My husband is now yelling "That's it! NO MORE WALKS EVER AGAIN!", to which I respond with more whisper-screaming to "please shut up". We are both at our witt's end and look like raving lunatics and we've only been walking for 5 minutes and are only 4 or 5 houses down from our own.
I told her she needs to stay close to Daddy now. This puts her behind me but infront of him and apparently the fall taught her nothing because she's running again. I'm trying my best to look in front of me at the boy and behind me at my daughter at the same time while not crashing the stroller or running over other pedestrians.
I told them since they aren't listening, they now both have to hold onto the stroller. That lasted a full 30 seconds before the fighting started. My daughter, being the little peanut she is, is trying her best to reach the stroller rail to hold on. It didn't help that my son decided at that moment to imagine the stroller is now a race car. She did her best to hang on while her tiny legs struggled to keep up with the speed. Next they start a full-blown battle over who gets control of the steering. They argue and scream as each of them is shoving the stroller, making it maneuver wildly. Her little legs are again flailing as she tries to keep pace with the stroller's rapid and violent jerks as the three of us tussle over control.
Some more yelling on my part and now they are both mad at eachother and me. My husband has since given up on all of this and is 200 feet behind us playing on his phone and blissfully unaware of it all. My son opts to walk ahead again and so my daughter takes this opportunty to once again claim ownership of stroller steering. This time she is walking under me and pushing it by the cargo basket below with all of her might. This makes me have to walk with my arms fully extended infront of me and bent over at the waist so I don't trample her. She feels me resisting so I'm not speeding with the baby and this infuriates her. She demands that I stop touching the stroller altogether. That's not going to happen so "kindly" tell her it's enough already and I'm the only one allowed to push the stroller. She is NOT happy.
Next, she decides to run ahead of us and my son decides to drop back. Since she won't listen to me when I tell her to stop running, I thought a good idea might be to make a game of "red light, green light" so I could get her to stop before the driveways when I yell red light. Great idea right!? I was proud of myself for coming up with that one on the fly. It worked too!! For like, 8 seconds until my son decided to start barking out all the wrong commands at all the wrong times. He wouldn't stop even though I told him over and over that I was the only one allowed to make the calls. While we battle that out, my daughter is still running ahead and my husband is still miles behind.
We pass a friends house and get a few minute reprieve from the non-stop drama while the kids played and we chatted. A few friendly exchanges and a 5 minute battle with the kids to move along and we are on our way again. Ahead, I see a man gardening with his lawnmower parked partially blocking the sidewalk. My son is running ahead and talking relentlessly while not looking where he's going. I'm yelling to him to watch out, but he doesn't hear me because he's still rambling on about something and getting increasingly irritated that I'm not listening to HIM! Just at the last second he looks up and narrowly misses hitting his face on the lawnmower handles. As my daughter and husband approach behind me, my son runs ahead toward the corner so I had to chose to tell him to stop before I could yell back to them to watch out for the lawnmower. Sure enough <<BONG!>> she crashes right into it and starts screaming yet again. Then she continues on to yell at the homeowner for leaving his lawnmower "in her way" on the sidewalk while SHE'S trying to walk there!! Did I mention she's only 3??
After surviving that, the next disaster in the making appears. Theres a woman with a new puppy. He's so cute and the kids want to pet him so bad, but the problem is that the woman is clearly insane and the puppy is deathly afraid of people. As the woman is literally dragging the puppy towards the kids, you can see the whites of its eyes while it flails around wildly on the end of his leash. The poor puppy then starts yelping and howling and the kids just plain ignore me as I keep saying "lets just go, the puppy is scared". They want to run towards him and only terrify him more! The woman is unrelenting in her efforts to have the kids pet him and at this point the poor little guy looked more like a kite on a short string on a windy day. I finally got the kids to keep it moving when my daughter spots a bunny and chases after it onto someone's lawn. As she's running around and around their tree, my son is up ahead trying to pick flowers out of someone's garden. We make it around the corner when my daughter falls again and skins her knee. Her usual screams are coupled with panic when she sees the blood. She's now added "IT'S BLEEDING!" into her chorus of cries. Not two minutes later it's my son's turn to fall. He triped over the sidewalk and landed face down on the cement - and stayed laying there, face to the pavement while he wailed. This of course had to happen right in someone's driveway at the very moment they happen to pull up and want to go in. With one hand I'm pushing the stroller and with the other I'm trying to help him off the ground. My husband is walking behind me carrying my daughter who is still screaming. The man pulling into his driveway rolls down the window to see that everything is alright. We assure him we are all fine even though both kids are bleeding and screaming at the top of their lungs. Then I see the crazy lady with the puppy dragging her puppy straight for us again. That was enough for me. We turned off and headed home.
Two skinned knees, two skinned hands, a bloody finger and a lump on the head and we are finally home from our "nice relaxing walk". I think next time I'll just take the Sit N' Stand. Spiders can't be as bad as that whole spectacle. Or better yet, maybe I'll just go alone. Maybe my husband was onto something when he forbade us from ever taking walks as a family again.
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