Give it up

My neighbor, Julie, and I went to the park this morning and let our kids sweat off the energy that had them tearing through the house, practically foaming at the mouth earlier. Now, my kids are all sleeping so score one for mommy! As we watched our kids zip across the playground, (Sloan, my little ladies man, was being followed by a gaggle of little girls, strutting like he was the king of the world) Julie and I had a few minutes to sit and relax - very few, but that's beside the point...As we watched our kids go from cute and all put together to sweaty, smelly and dirty, we both commented on the fact that as a parent, at some point you have to just loosen up and let them be kids. Getting dirty is one of the greatest things about being a kid. You can dress them cute and worry and fret if they get a drop of grime on them, but eventually, you just have to let it go, do a little more laundry and smile as they go out and conquer the world (or slay dragons, as Sloan and his little posse were doing. Unfortunately, at one point, he decided that Tia was the dragon and told them all to punch her down - nice...)

Some of my favorite memories as a kid were heading off with a couple of friends to explore a creek that was about a quater mile from our house. We scaled walls of solid mud and slid into this creek that was infested with all kinds of lovely critters and snakes and spent hours swimming and digging in the sludge. It was our own make-believe world where we could dream up stories of being stranded and rescued by a handsome prince. We were the heroes of our own land, and we usually came home covered in mud from head to toe and had to be hosed off before we were allowed to even think about coming near the house. Those were great times. I want my kids to have adventures like that, though the world we live in today does limit my ability to let them run off into the trees for hours without worrying that some pervert is going to come snatch them away. So sad.

Aaaaanyway, I'm totally getting off track. To go along with this post, I'm including a few pictures of the kids that I took last week. We had a weird day last Friday when it just kind of rained on and off all day long. The kids would beg and plead to go outside and as soon as they did, it started to rain again. Finally, I just tossed my hands up and told them to play in the rain (don't worry it wasn't lightening, though had we had as bad a day as we did Thursday, I may have considered sending them out in lightening...I kid - maybe). Needless to say, they had a ball running around in the rain, splashing in puddles and getting nice and dirty. I mean, that's what being a kid is all about, right?