It all started about a week ago. Marin brought home a paper about the school walk-a-thon. She was supposed to get neighbors to pledge money for her to walk a certain amount of laps. Each lap was 1/8 of a mile, so we decided on 4 laps. The note said each child should try to get $20 in pledges, so I wrote out a check for $20 and stuffed it in the envelope. Fast forward one week to today. I realized as I got her ready for school that she didn't have any shoes that are appropriate for walking 1/2 mile. So I sent her off to school and Kate, Andrew, and I headed off to Payless to buy some walking shoes. When I got into Payless Kate went nuts. She has a bit of a shoe fetish, specifically sparkly shoes. She was running down every aisle grabbing every sparkly shoe in sight. Payless has a surprisingly large amount of sparkly shoes. I hurried and grabbed Marin's running shoes, paid for them (all of this with one hand because I was holding Andrew) and then tried to chase her down. Payless is a small store, but it took me approximately 137 minutes (okay, I exaggerate) to get her out of the store. I untangled jewelry, tried to find the matches to lots of random sparkly shoes, and ended up dragging her out of the store by her arm (still holding Andrew, mind you) while she yelled, "Stop it mom, you're hurting me!" over and over. Then I had to drag her through the parking lot to the car while onlookers judged. Then I had to wrestle her into her car seat. I said, "Kate, we don't get to go to the school park if you don't cooperate," and her reply was "I WANT to go to the schoow park, I. DON'T. WANT. TO. HOP. UP. IN. MY. CAR. SEAT!" Apparently I tell her to "hop up in her car seat" a lot.
When we got home it was about time to walk and pick up Marin for school so I hurried and made a few sack lunches for Marin and her friend who was participating with her. While I did this Kate emptied dirt with a little shovel from one of the flower beds onto the garage floor and Andrew ate it. Lovely. So I got Andrew cleaned up and strapped into the stroller and Kate's bike helmet on (except it's a ski helmet, she won't wear her bike helmet) and we started off. About 3 houses down Kate said she was cold and wanted a jacket. So I ran home to get her a jacket. Then I ran back and she refused to wear the jacket. So we continued. She stopped about every 2 feet to pick dandelions or try and eat dirt. I finally ended up pushing the stroller into the back of her bike and basically bulldozing her to the school. We were 2 minutes late. Marin and her friend came running up, I put Marin's new shoes on, and we went to the playground to eat their lunches.
Kate already ate so she ran for one of the playgrounds (there are 2 and this is relevant to the story I promise). Kate started taking off her shoes which is what she does at every park no matter what, no matter if she has to tiptoe over the wood chips and get slivers and cuts on the bottom of her feet, no matter the amount of coaxing from me or the other kids, her motto is "No shoes at the park in 2012." The over-zealous recess duty lady wearing an orange vest promptly told her she had to put her shoes on. So to my total surprise, she put them on...then walked over to the other playground and took them off there. Pretty smart, I think. So meanwhile, Marin and her friend were supposed to be eating their lunches, but they have decided to go back into the school and use the potty. They took at least 15 minutes to do this, then came back. The reason I know how long they took was that I was trying to keep Andrew from eating wood chips. He was ticked the whole time.
They finally came back and started "eating" except that 10 minutes later their lunches were untouched. I finally told them to bring their lunches with them and start walking. I got their little cards they were supposed to fill out for every lap and they ran about 10 feet and then started walking slow as tar. I calculated they were walking about 60 minute miles, so we would be there awhile.
I went to check on Kate at the playground and the over-zealous recess duty lady was telling Kate over and over that she couldn't walk up the slides. Then she came and told me, "Walking up the slide is against our rules." So I told this to Kate (knowing full well it wasn't going to make a speck of difference, she's THREE lady!) and walked back to cheer Marin and her friend on. Marin walked past me with her head hung down like she was going to die. She had walked 3/8 of a mile. Now this is a girl who can swim all day, play at the park for hours, begs to stay outside and run every minute of her life, so she is not one to shy away from exercise....normally. But I didn't even care. I'm the only one who pledged her 1/2 mile so I gave her permission to stop.
Then we started to head home (Hallelujah!). I got Kate all geared up, Andrew back in the stroller, Marin and her friends' helmets on, and we started off. The problem was, the kids at the school had had some kind of sidewalk chalk decorating party. Every inch of every sidewalk on the school grounds was decorated with sidewalk chalk drawings. Now Kate likes to eat sidewalk chalk (and everything else, her Pica problem is a subject for a whole different post). So of course she had to stop and LICK the sidewalk. Yes, you heard me. LICK the sidewalk. The other moms were staring of course. I kept having to pick her up, put her on her bike, and shove her little bottom forward. This went on for the whole three blocks home until I finally told her that when we got home I would give her some ice cream. It took 25 minutes just to get 3 blocks home (I don't exaggerate here).
