If you follow this blog, you know that our thing is to go on adventures. We explore Houston daily, look for new things to do each week and even travel across the country for fun. We generally have a lot of fun and make a lot of great memories. But, I want to reassure you that this is not always the case and that we often have days where we wished we had stayed home and watched TV.
So, with that, let me tell you about the damn fun run. I enlisted my husband to join us on the 3 mile family walk as part of the Jingle Bell Run. We like to walk and we love Downtown Houston, so it was going to be a great day.
Last Saturday we packed up 2 strollers and headed to the Downtown YMCA. The plan was for my 5 year old to walk, which is very capable of doing, and for the 3 and 1 year olds to ride in the single strollers.
We started the race in high spirits. We had on our foam antlers and jingle bells and were walking through the streets of Downtown Houston. For about 3 blocks.
After 3 blocks, Joe decided he needed to ride in the stroller. At about the same time, Baby James started wiggling out of his stroller seat belt. So after a few blocks of struggling, and just as we are leaving Downtown and heading down Allen Parkway, we have a baby screaming and 2 big kids fighting over the stroller. The only kid that wanted to walk was the baby.
This went on and on. We tried to put 2 kids in the stroller together, we tried to carry the big kids, we tried to carry the baby and we tried to have dad push 2 strollers at the same time. This fun run was so not fun. And we were miles from our car.
Still not at the turn around point, we hoped the curb and headed back to the YMCA. We strapped the screaming baby into the stroller, let the 3 year old fall asleep in the other stroller, and convinced the 5 year old that we were practically to the finish line and he needed to run across it.
My big boy soon figured out that we weren’t close to the finish line, but I think he realized the position his parents were in. He went along with the walking and after a another mile, we sprinted across the finish line.
The walk was really quite awful. We should have brought the baby carrier or a double stroller or another adult or waited for a few years. Instead we struggled along for 2 hours and wondered why we paid money to punish ourselves.
My point in telling you about our terrible afternoon is not to put down the Jingle Bell Run. It was just the BigKidSmallCity crew that was having a hard time. The point is that things don’t always go as planned, but it’s not a reason to give up.
By the time we got back to the comfort of our car, we were feeling better about parenthood. A few hours later we were out having fun at Lights in the Heights.
So, when you go out and explore with your kids, and things don’t go well, remember that we were out in the middle of Allen Parkway and feeling the same way as you.
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