Sunday Jett and I hit the park at 9:00 am. After a while Jett came back to his favorite activity from last summer: pushing the stroller (which he calls "car"). I made the mistake of letting him push the stroller out of the park and on towards home. The mistake was obvious immediately, when he wanted to push the stroller on to the street with all of the other cars.
He pushed and pushed his stroller, but the poor kid couldn't get it past me. He cried, he whined, he slumped down on the sidewalk, sweaty, winded, and angry. I suggested that he sit in the stroller, but with that threat he hopped up, and I, fearing that he would bolt in to traffic, scooped him up and slam dunked him into the seat of the umbrella stroller.
Those stupid, useless restraining straps on the stroller. They were nice and relaxed - all pulled out perfectly for a nice and relaxed Jett, who doesn't need any restraining because he is so pleased to sit pretty in the stroller. Those stupid straps weren't doing their job. It was their time to shine and they didn't even know it, hanging all limp and lifeless around Jett's flailing legs and wriggling waist. Jett had half his body out from under them in no time.
As I wrestled him back in the stroller I could feel parents looking at me, and I didn't blame them. We were a sight to behold and a noise to avoid. Jett was a mess of tears, sweat, and snot. I had one forearm across his chest, pressing him in to the stroller, one foot searching for the brakes on the rear wheels to keep the stroller from moving, and both hands slowly, ever so slowly, feeding the buckles of the stroller straps back towards the seat of the stroller, one little nylon ripple at a time....
2. Tantrums can start and stop without warning.
As soon as I got the straps just tight enough to keep Jett from sliding out of the stroller to a dangerous degree, I kissed Jett on the head and started pushing my sweaty, red-faced, snot-covered, tear-stained baby home. Two steps in to this walk Jett cheerily announces "all done!" and chats with me all the way home. As if two seconds ago he wasn't tearfully announcing to every parent and child on the playground that I was preventing him from fulfilling his reasonable and otherwise attainable lifelong dream of playing Frogger on Damen Avenue.
Is he kidding me?
3. No, he is not kidding.
He will walk an entire mile, while pushing a stroller, two days in a row - as long as you let him dictate exactly where he will walk.
Now if only I could fit in the stroller....
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