Liza, my new mom friend from playgroup, called me yesterday. She calls me every weeks just to check up on me, see how I’m holding up, hear about the kids latest exploits, and check my sanity level. She has two girls and vividly remembers how hard it was in the beginning.<\/p>\n
Liza also manages to convince me to get out of the house with her. If it’s just me, I tend to hang around home. Maybe wander down to the local park on a day when I’m feeling invincible but mostly we play in the backyard or hang with the neighbor kids. But once a week I make an exception for Liza.<\/p>\n
This week we planned a trip to this new park she discovered. It’s a good 20 minute drive down the freeway but she promised me a huge fountain and play area for the kids. So I threw caution to the wind and pack up Leina and Kulia and headed to Liza’s house. I followed her black car through back streets and country roads until we wound up at a Korean War monument. Sure enough, there was also a park with the absolute coolest water feature ever. The water was only ankle deep with tiny, shin high waterfalls and little shooting fountains that varied in height. The day was slightly overcast and we had the fountain mostly to ourselves.<\/p>\n
With Liza’s help, I got Kulia in the Bjorn and Leina decked out in her swim diaper. All the other kids ran straight into the water but not Leina. She stood right at the edge and watched. Every now and then one of her friends would run back, grab her hand and say “come on Leina!” but Leina would pull away and refuse to budge. I gabbed with the moms but I kept and eye on my oldest. She was missing all the fun. I knew if I just got her to test the water, she would realize how much fun it was but all the coaxing in the world wouldn’t budge her.<\/p>\n
So I decided to take action. I pulled up my pant legs, grabbed her hand, and wadded into the water myself. We pretended to rescue baby Jaguar with Diego and I showed her how to make the water shoot out of the fountain holes. I climbed up the small waterfalls and jumped around while holding tight to Kulia in the Bjorn. I’m sure I was quite a hilarious sight as the only adult playing in the kid fountain. After a couple minutes, Leina let go of my hand. I followed her around for a while, helping her imagine and explore and then I stopped and let her wander away. Her friends found her and they climbed to the top of the fountain, babbling and splashing together. I headed back to the moms with wet feet and damp pants. For the next hour Leina ran in the water, climbed the walls, and experiented with the fountains. She was the last one coaxed out and so desperately wanted to continue playing.<\/p>\n
I see so much of myself in her. It’s hard sometimes to step outside your comfort zone. It’s easy to watch the world go by but if you’re lucky, someone will take you by the hand and help you test the water. Somehow, it’s easier to wade in when you have a friend by your side. I need a little coaxing too and I can hardly wait for Liza to call me next week. I wonder what she’ll have planned for us to do!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liza, my new mom friend from playgroup, called me yesterday. She calls me every weeks just to check up on me, see how I’m holding up, hear about the kids latest exploits, and check my sanity level. She has two girls and vividly remembers how hard it was in the beginning. Liza also manages to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Kqhb-bx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}