A Thursday At The Park With The Baby Girl

Grammy had to go to Georgia so I got the baby girl today. We went to an off-brand park on the Avondale/Ortega border, Stinson Park. I like to switch it up a little bit. Actually, the way we wound up at the park is kind of funny in a my-daughter-is-going-to-be-a-world-class-control-freak kind of way. I backed out of the driveway and headed towards downtown instead of towards the park. It’s just force of habit. I went a grand total of one block out of the way. I made a three right hand turns and got us to the park. No big deal, right? Wrong! She didn’t like how we got to the park. It was dead to her. I decided not to go to war with her about playing at a park. YOU WILL SWING ON THIS SWING AND YOU WILL LIKE IT! seemed just as irrational as her disqualifying the park as a suitable place to play because I pulled in the wrong driveway, so we moved on. Stinson Park was a lot more crowded than our neighborhood park, which was a good thing. My baby girl is growing up so fast. She was a little timid but she played well with other kids and put my mind at ease about her transition into school. There were a few funny spots. The first was when a little five or six year old girl was climbing a serpentine jungle gym while LMJ gave the play-by-play and the color commentary: “She’s climbing all the way to the top, Daddy. She’s very strong.” When the little girl climbed down LMJ gave her a round of applause. It was a little bit awkward for the little girl. LMJ figured if the little girl could climb this thing then she could too, and headed up. I had to put the brakes on because I couldn’t reach LMJ and if she fell she would bounce off this metal apparatus at least once and all I would be able to do is try to catch her before she fell the full ten feet to the ground. She thought I wasn’t doing anything but hatin’ on a playa. She also climbed a weirdly shaped ladder that I can’t describe (should have taken a picture) and got to the highest platform on a multi-plaything-slide-tunnel thing. She worked very hard to do it and was very proud of herself. The funny part was when a five year old boy was whining about not being able to climb this ladder that my not quite three year old just finished climbing, and his grandmother made him climb it. After he got to the top she thought he was fine and went to chase his more courageous brother who was headed for the river. The little bitch started to cry (I blame the Crocs). There was another little boy on the platform that had been playing with LMJ earlier, sharing an elephant ride, and when the little bitch started crying he tried to hug him. It was the sweetest thing. We had a fantastic day.