Today I loaded up the boys for a nice jaunt to the park.  It is summer in most parts of the country but here but it is 61° and cloudy.  Again.  But it was not raining so for us that counts as park weather.  After a brief discussion, we decided on a small park near our house that has a slide, a couple random playground toys, and a baseball field.  It is about a three minute drive from our house, if that, so I did not pack a snack.  Since we are in the throes of potty training I did have with me the trusty ole’ red back pack containing several changes of clothes.  And we travel with this too – quite handy in the back of our Subaru Outback.

We get to the park and the boys gleefully run off to play.  I sit down on a bench thinking that I get a couple of minutes to myself to play with my new smart phone.  Yes, I have discovered Angry Birds people, and I am not proud of it.  Everyone is happy and then Carter tells me that he has to go poop.  He has only told me this once before and successfully made it to the toilet.  I shove my phone in my purse, grab his hand, holler at Cody to follow us, and we sprint the length of the baseball field in the direction of the car.  Now a baseball field is not that long but it felt like a marathon.  I swear that ball field was miles long.

Such. A. Long. Way.

We make it to the car and he sits on his little travel potty.  Nothing.  It is at this time that I realize that Cody is not with us.  Now, no one else is at the park and our neighborhood is pretty safe, but I am one of those moms that get twitchy if I can’t see my kids when I am out in public.  I can’t help myself.  I position myself where I can see him, get his attention and wave him over.  By the time he gets to the car, Carter is done sitting on the potty and is getting grumpy.  Ok, false alarm.  We all head back to the playground and the happy playing commences – for about three or four minutes.  Once again Carter calls out that he has to go poop.  Repeat the frantic sprint back to the car and the sitting and the nothing.  Sigh.

You can take a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Something like that.

We go back to the playground for the third time.  The boys run the bases and slide down the slide.  Then Carter tells me that he has pooped in his pants.  Crap.  We go home.  The entire trip to the park lasted about 25 minutes with maybe 10 of those minutes spend in happy play.

What can you do?  Such is the way of things.  The rest of the day was much better.  I got all the bedding in the house washed, we took a stroll in our hood looking for daisies so that we could attempt this, we busted out the water table when the thermometer reached 70°, and I made some strawberry freezer jam from a $5 flat of strawberries Husband surprised me with yesterday.

Yeah, the boys picked out their own hats and glasses. Pretty rad if you ask me.

  Not bad.  Not bad at all.