We finally had a nice day yesterday, full of warm weather and the promise of the coming Spring, and so I decided that it was time to emerge from hibernation and take the kids to the playground. The first playground visit of Spring is always an exciting time. You get to see what new skills your children have that they didn’t have in the fall. For instance, Edward climbed the ladder all by himself for the first time, and Ruby doesn’t need a push on the swings anymore (although she still wants one).
Of course with Ruby on the swings, Edward was very interested in them himself. Not the baby swings. The real swings like big sister was on. Now, he absolutely cannot swing by himself yet. We tried for about half a second and it was very clear that his balance isn’t quite there at this point. Well, being the good Tenor Dad that I am, I decided to sit him in my lap and swing together with him.
At first we went gently, and he loved it. He was laughing and smiling, and this made me stupid. My overconfidence boosted, I decided to really give him a ride, and so I walked us backwards a few extra feet for added height and speed. The problem was that the swing was made for little kids, and as such it sat about two inches off of the ground. I was not the right size for that swing.
When I was on the swing by myself, I could just lift my legs up as I sped through the bottom of my arc. Yes, it was a close call, but I could make it through, despite being way too big. On my first joint descent down however, I quickly learned that there was no way to lift my legs high enough to clear the ground when there was a 35 pound toddler in my lap.
My boots hit the soft muddy ground and sunk in just enough to catch, and suddenly my feet stopped moving. Sadly, the rest of me did not. In the few milliseconds that I had to think before impact, I quickly assessed the situation and came up with two important facts. One: the playground was covered in rocks and gravel. Two: I was holding a small child.
I went into super parent mode at this point, cocooning Edward as bets as I could, and slid across the rocks on my free hand, knees, and face. I checked to make sure that the boy was okay before collapsing completely onto the ground, and don’t worry, he was more than okay. He loved it. He wanted to do it again. As I lay there, breathing heavily and attempting to pick gravel out of my palm, he walked around to the top of me and tried to lift me up by my hair so that we could try that one more time. They say that the sound of children’s laughter is supposed to be soothing. Not in this case.
Once I managed to get my bearings and pick myself up off the ground, I was happy to discover that I was fine. Not even bleeding! My hand, which had taken the worst of it, had a lot of rocks stuck to it, but they brushed off pretty easily. Even so, I was not ready to tackle that swing again. We spent the rest of the time going down the slide.