With kids, I never know what I’m going to get.  That’s a given, right?  But, to a certain extent, I feel like sometimes I know exactly what I AM going to get.

Like, after a long morning at Soak City with my kids, I’m going to get a long afternoon of quietness while they nap.  Or, when they have gone on rides and ran around Cedar Point all morning, they are going to be hungry for just about anything I pack for lunch.  When I promise ice cream at Pied Piper, I expect well behaved kids up until the ice cream is in hand.  Or, when I make their favorite thing for dinner, I expect clean plates without hassle.  When they stay up late, I expect them to sleep in then next morning.

It’s funny, right?  To expect that I can control my kids by sending through a predictable set of circumstances.  It works some of the time.  But, just like knowing I am not truly the one totally in control of life, especially  mine, I realize that there will be times when I’m thrown the occasional curve ball.  Raising kids would be way to easy if I could yield that much control!

 

So, there are days when my children, though hungry and strung out as they may be, refuse to eat anything I give them…nap, go to bed early, or sleep in…or even behave with Pied Piper hanging in the balance.  It happens to the best of us.

One curve ball in particular popped into my lap recently on a trip to Cedar Point.  By the time I got my two doddle-nuts moving out the door and to the park, it was already getting crowded.  Waiting in line isn’t something we usually do, since we live so close.  We get there early, avoid the crowds, and leave after lunch.

The kids were having a blast becoming friends with every other toddler their age that rode rides and waited in line with us.  Having worked up an appetite, we picked out a bench to eat lunch at.  A different bench than usual, out in the hot sun…but next to one of the huge new dinosaurs…that we found out, to much dismay, isn’t one of the ones that move.  Blast.

Brianne was so hungry she chowed her sandwich and asked to eat the rest of Lauren’s…who was quite obviously not ready to share it yet.  A whole bowl of strawberries, a juice box, and 2 cookies later, she was up chasing her little sister around.  While I gathered little Lo back to the bench to finish eating, Brianne continued to dance to the music coming from the newest ride.

“MOM!” she yelled.

Not expecting anything bad, since lunch had gone down without a whine, I looked up expecting to see the new dance move perfected.

“MOM!…Uh, Oh, MOM!  Uh-Oh….Uh….I think I’m gonnaaaaaaaaaaaaa——“…and barf.

Literally.

And then more barf.  Fresh strawberries of a different kind.

I felt like that huge dinosaur was staring at me.

After rallying a sweep to clean up my daughter’s mess as someone else’s was clearly already discovering it in the fullest of scope, I told her we were going to leave and go home so that she could rest.

“NOOOOOOOO!”  Tears of sadness.

“I want to stay and ride rides…..I don’t want to go home!  Nooooo!”

We are at Cedar Point all the time, so I didn’t think she’d care if we cut the morning short….we could literally come back tomorrow.

“You just barfed.  Are you sure you want to ride rides?”  And against my better judgement, I made her sit in the shade until the glass of water I gave her disappeared, and then let her out to ride the carousel.  She was fine.  I came to the conclusion maybe she had been dehydrated.My mom, who works at the park, met us in there on her lunch.

“Grandma!  I barfed!” Brianne told her happily, as she came over to meet us.  “I ate strawberries and then I BARFED them all out!!!! ha ha ha ha ha!”

Kids.  Just when you think they are fine, they barf. You think they need to go home because they are sick.  They’re fine.

Experience means nothing. lol.

Happy Hydrating!

Megs