So, we've always taken evening family walks. It started out as nice family thing to do, enjoy the weather, see the sites, get the pup out for some exercise. Now, it's routine, and you know what routine means to a borderline OCD child, we MUST take a walk, or the child goes bat-shit crazy out of his freagin mind at night.
Lately the weather has be gorgeous outside, and we know that this is only going to last so long before it gets hotter than a witch's kootchy in a Florida swamp, yes, I just said that. Anyways, knowing this, we decided to take a "long" walk the other night, this means we forgo the 0.5 mile loop around the smaller part of our neighborhood and head north to the "circle", basically a round trip a little over a mile (note the distances, we'll revisit this later). Part of the long walk includes a long pass by the big lake pond thing in the front of our community.
In this lakey-pond thing there are always ducks, but this day, there were not only ducks, but a mama duck and 8 of wee little babies. You can imagine Z's excitement at this as he belted out "ducks! ducks!" and naturally wanted to exit his wagon at this point. Of course my little cautious child stood a good 20 feet away from the pond while pointing at the ducks and squealing. We stop, look at said ducks, and attempt to move on, I say "Z, let's get back in your wagon", "NO! ehh!" frantic shake of the head. Fine, keep walking, let's wear you out. So we come to the end of the pond and start getting back on the sidewalks within the subdivision, "ok Z, NOW let's get back in your wagon", "ehh! NO!", frantic shake of the head, you see where this is going. I'm pretty sure the little bugger walked at least a quarter mile, slllooooowwwwly, toddler speed, you know like the kids in Family Circus, anything BUT a straight line.
Finally, we're getting close to the home stretch, so I decide we should pick up the pace so we can get home before Z's bedtime, I mean really, this was supposed to be a relatively quick walk in total. So I pick Z up, kicking, screaming, flailing, tears streaming down his face, and place him back in the wagon. I have ruined. his. life. And then, I hand him a leaf from a nearby tree, and just like that, silence and smiles.
He was content the rest of the way home and slept very well that night :). We'll go see the ducks again soon.
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I love how Zach just watches the ducks, cautiously and from a distance. This would not even occur to Cole, he would have charged them within seconds of spotting them :)
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