Plans Change!
Last Saturday was a beautiful fall Saturday - a “stay-at-home” day, as it is known in our household. That term doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for four out of five of us. Two of us work at home and the boys are home with us. The only one who has any “not” stay-at-home days is our first grader.
But I digress. We were all home together, and the weather was great. Even better, I felt reasonably human after snagging an extra hour of sleep. (I was up much of the night with Baby B, which is par for the course. Nothing was wrong with him; our babies just aren’t sleepers). On this recent Saturday, between the weather and the sleep, anything felt possible!
We had planned to go to this First Responders Fair that my husband had read about. There were fire trucks and police cars and an inflatable obstacle course - it’s intended as a great way for kids to have positive interactions with people in uniforms who can help them in emergencies. That’s super important! We don’t want our children to be afraid of the people whom they might need to help them. Also, it was located right outside of Wegmans, which is the holy grail of grocery stores for us. We had big plans for this event, including but not limited to Wegmans sushi and coffee.
But then…
Our big girl (the one referenced above who is the only one who has to leave the house five days a week) woke up and immediately asked to go rake leaves. She is an individual who benefits from a lot of Heavy Work (stay tuned for some writing on that soon!). She is always better-regulated after a good workout. And like I said, it was beautiful outside.
So when I woke up from my hour of sleep, I woke up to our big and our middle outside raking leaves together MOST harmoniously. My husband had been asked to play the role of Ms. Hannigan (please refer to the musical Annie, in which Ms. Hannigan forces orphans to clean the orphanage constantly). This is Big Girl’s favorite game, which works out rather nicely for us!
Proof of an actual chore being cheerfully accomplished.
Hubby was standing in the yard drinking coffee and holding the baby while fake-yelling at the kids to get every leaf and keep working. For some reason, Big Girl finds this endlessly amusing, and our middle (two years old) would follow her right off a cliff if she asked him to, so he is also amused by this game!
Hubby brought me the hungry baby, who promptly ate, passed out and consented to be transferred to his bed. It was a Saturday morning miracle! I was ALONE in my house, could hear my happy children outside DOING AN ACTUAL CHORE, and there was coffee. So I did what I usually do when I have free time… I cooked. No pressure if this is not your jam, but it’s totally what puts me in my happy place. I made some chocolate chip pancakes and jussssst as I was finishing, sweet Baby B woke up. So I lured everyone inside to eat pancakes together.
This is how we really eat pancakes.
We would have had enough time to get everyone ready to go to the First Responders Fair…and we just couldn’t do it. As the older two finished their pancakes, they migrated very organically to the floor and began to build with Duplos. There was one brief but fiery scuffle over a purple balloon (unrelated to the Duplos), but overall, it was very peaceful and productive play.
We grownups sat at the table and drank our coffee and had a conversation with our eyes about how we did not want to pack everyone up and head to this fair. Baby B was busy eating one speck of banana mush at at time and gagging as though it tasted like garbage. He’s not super ready for solids yet, but he sure thinks he is and constantly wants to try. Three kids in, I’m not worried about it. He’ll get there.
So we reversed course on our plans. There’s a fine line around here, in which we have to prep our kids a bit so they’re mentally prepared for an event or a scheduled activity, but not talk it up too much in case plans change. Although I know many children are more flexible and go-with-the-flow, I also know many are not…we aren’t the only ones living this “fine line of prep” life.
We ended up having zero regrets. We had the most lovely, relaxing morning. This is not always the case on stay-at-home days, when Hubby and I often feel as though we have to catch up on all the housework but also feel as though we need to make the most of the time with the kids. Sometimes weekend days end up feeling stressful. (Again, we can’t be the only ones who feel this tug of war on the weekends.)
But on this day… somehow… we managed to find the balance. Big Girl and I read a new Calpurnia Tate while Baby B slept and Mr. Middle did yardwork with Daddy. (Calpurnia Tate is amazing, if you’ve never heard of this series, check it out!)
We all took a break together on a quilt out front under our favorite tree to facetime Hubby’s sister. Afterward, we ended up chatting about what we wanted to do after Mr. Middle’s afternoon nap. Big Girl and I have been talking about taking a hike, like a real hike up a real mountain, and that was exactly what she wanted to do today! We were all in for that plan, because like I said, it was GORGEOUS outside.
When I say it was gorgeous weather, what I mean is that it was finally cool enough to put this hat on Baby B!
So the toddler napped (AND the baby - at the SAME TIME)...boy, when miraculous days happen, they happen in a big way! I prepped dinner and Big Girl watched some Bluey (because we are real and yes, our children do get limited screen time…more on that another time).
When the boys were up, we were off on our adventure!
BUT FIRST. A fit was thrown by our darling eldest when she realized we would not, in fact, be scaling cliff faces and climbing rock walls. (She does, in fact, take rock climbing classes, so she assumed when we said we’d be ‘hiking Mount Nittany’ that we’d be climbing rock walls.) We handled this with a possibly-less-than-stellar level of empathy, although we Really. Did. Try. I mean, did she think I was going to rappel down a cliff while wearing her baby brother?
What Big Girl would rather be doing.
One hundred hours later, we were all in the car and hoping we had enough daylight left not to get stuck at the top of a mountain at sunset. We almost had that happen once, on a Thanksgiving hike gone horribly wrong. That trip involved my asthmatic mom, a young nursing baby, and a large diabetic and blind Labrador retriever. But that’s a story for another day. (Working title: BE PREPARED.)
On this day, we found the trailhead, buckled Mr. Middle into the hiking backpack, and heaved it up onto my husband’s back. I buckled Baby B onto my front and put water bottles on my back. Everyone was in a great mood, and we started up the mountain. We were careful to warn Big Girl that we would likely not make it all the way to the top, that Mom and Dad were not in the BEST of physical shape, AND that we had a toddler and a seven-month-old. We told her we would all have to BE FLEXIBLE. We also reminded everyone that we could take breaks whenever we needed to, and that there was no race or set place we had to reach.
For reference, Mt. Nittany is anything but a flat hike. It’s a strenuous, steep, rocky hike up to a GORGEOUS overlook. As it turns out, and this is super lucky, there are actually several overlooks, and one of them is closer than the one at the tippy-top. So we sort of set our flexible sights on that closest overlook, which was about a mile and 600 feet of elevation up. Straaaight up.
Twelve minutes in, we took a snack break. The massive silver lining of this is that our toddler asked to be out of the backpack. Then that tiny trailblazer hiked the entire rest of the two-hour trip. I couldn’t even believe it. He climbed over logs that were shoulder-height on him.
Hubby put his arms out for Mr. Middle to lean on as he climbed down…and THIS is what he did!
He fell down a hundred times and just got back up and kept going. Meanwhile, he and his sister made a dozen on-their-bellies bug observations! We found woolly caterpillars and dead millipedes and holes that we suspected belonged to snakes. We saw squirrels and chipmunks and giant grasshoppers and thank heavens, no actual snakes. My plant-loving husband identified so many native species for the kids!
About three-quarters of the way up to that first overlook, we realized we were never going to make it hiking at toddler-pace. So we split up. Big Girl, Baby B, and I carried on to the end-goal, while Hubby stayed with Mr. Middle and explored slowly. I did not make this decision because I felt strong or in shape… I was huffing and puffing and sweating and wondering how much I would regret it when I couldn’t get out of bed the next day. But for better or worse, our most determined family member is also our most physically fit. And she was determined to see that view, and I was not going to be the one to tell her no. So I pretended I wasn’t dying and we booked it up that mountain!
AND WE MADE IT. And it was so worth it!
She was appropriately impressed with the view, which really was phenomenal. I was so proud of her for not giving up…. and even more proud of my own sweaty mom-bod. We talked on the way back down about how proud we were of our strong bodies and what our bodies accomplished today.
When we met back up with Mr. Middle and Hubby, we stopped for another snack break. It was at this point that we discovered a rather horrible-looking batch of hives popping up all over Baby B. In true flexible spirit, the kids didn’t whine one single bit and packed up their snacks triple-fast so we could speed up our descent. The toddler solved the problem by carrying a cup of ranch dressing the whole way back to the van, licking as he went.
The kids’ level of energy when we got back to the trailhead was still going strong - they sprinted the whole way from the trailhead back to the van. Hubby and I struggled along behind, high-fiving the whole way, and vowing to get in better shape so we can keep up with our kids.
In the end, the baby was fine, and it was just a weird viral rash that went away on its own and didn't bother him at all. (Weird skin stuff runs in our fam.) We had such fun hiking that we all decided to repeat it as soon as possible.
The takeaways today are:
Don’t be too attached to your plans and,
Pay attention to the mood in your household when you are able. Sometimes you just need to ditch your plans.
Now aren’t you just dying to get out there and take a hike with your kids?!
