Busted. So Busted.

It's all fun and games until you try to drive past a playground with a toddler in the car. Fortunately, I only try to do exactly that TWICE A DAY EVERY DAY OMG ::HEADEXPLODE::

Sooooo ... Alexis goes to a summer camp. The summer camp happens to be located right next to the football field where we spend hours and hours for cheerleading practice in the summer, which happens to be right next to the playground where Mila plays away the hours of cheerleading practice. Mila isn't dumb; she immediately recognized the playground and was very clear about what she thought should happen on Day One.

Day One was super disappointing for her. So was Day Two. The disappointment was containable, though, because I was able to drop Alexis off and pick her up without Mila getting out of the car.

Day Three, though. HOOBOY.

Day Three led to a change in the pickup process. Said change meant that instead of pulling up and having Alexis jump in the car, I had to get out of the car and go fetch her. Thus, Mila had to get out of the car. Do you know what happens when a toddler finds herself in the wild and sees a playground that she loves?

That girl is FAST. That's what I'm saying.

Mila's feet barely touched the ground before she made eye contact with the slide and began flying towards it. I took off in pursuit, but I was wearing work shoes. Tiny people wearing comfy shoes are WAY faster than grown women in heels. A running tackle was involved, you guys.

The logical thing to do, of course, was to let Mila play. So we did. I fetched Alexis (with a screaming Mila thrown over my shoulder because she completely disagreed that we should take Alexis with us to the playground), and we spent half an hour playing.

All was well.

And then came Day Four.

The second I picked Mila up from daycare, she started in. "Playground?" she asked sweetly. Sweet turned into assertive turned into demanding turned into "DAMMIT, WOMAN. I SAID PLAYGROUND. DO MY BIDDING." There's a ten-minute drive that separates Mila's daycare from Alexis' camp and Mila spent every second of that ten minutes reminding me that she wanted to go to the playground so she could slide and swing and all of the things.

I told her "yes" the first time she said it. I swear. I also told her "yes" the next 5000000 times she said it. Apparently, however, that's not enough for Little Miss because she would not stop talking. She was so busy talking about the playground, I think she was forgetting to breathe. I can't be sure, though, because I kinda sorta stopped bothering to pay attention.

Ummmm ... you guys. YOU GUYS. A few minutes after I gave up on trying to make the beast understand that I was going to let her have her way, she suddenly turned silent. The pause gave me pause, so I tuned in mentally.

"You hear me, mom?" Mila asked.

MY TWO-YEAR-OLD CALLED ME OUT FOR NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO HER.

I'm so screwed with this one.

Comments

[Robin]

I feel your pain. We don't pass a playground every day but I've had 20 minutes of this over playgrounds or not wanting to go home from whatever errands we were running or us leaving a restaurant after giving up on the 3 year old actually eating.

[Mary]

Yes. Yes you are.