None of it is Fair

Tuesday

Mar212017

While this winter has been unnerving in its mildness, it still has been winter. The dark falls early and the fun stops earlier. It's hard to find a time to get to a playground or such when the sun sets 10 minutes after it rises. Thus, now that the days are growing longer and we've crossed the Daylight Saving Time line, Mila is a cagey little thing. She wants to spend all of the hours outdoors playing. Always.

She really doesn't care if it's cold. She just needs daylight.

That means we've been sneaking off to a playground at every possible turn, even if only for a few minutes. Today was cheer sign-up day (hooray?), so the nice wide open window for playground time was consumed with waiting in line and trying on uniforms and blah.

Poor Mila.

All she wanted to do was to go to the playground, but instead she had to sit around and wait for her sister forever. Okay, so maybe it technically wasn't forever, but it was over an hour. We finally left about twenty minutes before sundown. That's basically forever if you're two years old.

Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of daylight is just enough daylight, right? Right.

So when we wrapped up the joy that is cheer sign-ups (::cough::), I assessed the situation and decided we should RUN to the playground. No walking, RUN. As luck would have it, there was one just across the parking lot from the cheer thing, so I threw the girls in the car and drove the 100 yards across the lot.

For what it's worth, cheer sign-ups were a slow and painful process, so there was no mass exodus. I think one family got to leave about every 20 minutes. We had the parking lot to ourselves and it was close by, so I decided to save thirteen seconds and not buckle seatbelts.

Go ahead and judge. It's the internet; that's what you do.

Done now?

GOOD, because Mila wasn't. It took mere seconds to cross the lot and Mila spent each and every one of those seconds yelling at me that she wasn't buckled. The good news about the whole thing is that I can now be certain that if I ever legitimately forget to buckle her in, she's going to flip her lid and let me know. The bad news is OMG STOP YELLING AT ME, CHILD.

I tried reasoning with her and telling her that we were going to the playground, but she was super focused. "I NEED BUCKLED!" she insisted.

"I'm not buckling you, Mila," I said as I pulled into the parking space in front of the slide. "We're at the playground."

"BUT THAT'S NOT FAIR!" she yelled.

Which, you guys. YOU GUYS. Isn't it the other kid who is supposed to be yelling at me about what's fair and not fair? And how exactly does the 2-year old already know that phrase?

Alexis is so busted.

I hope Alexis takes the time to teach Mila a little context for her handy new phrase. If she doesn't, I'm going to be forced to laugh and laugh and laugh.