What a Night!

It’s Friday, the end of the workday, beautiful weather. I pick Kayli up from daycare and decide we’re going to run one quick errand, then, we’ll head to a park to play until dark, which doesn’t leave us much time. So, following the errand, I head to a park that we haven’t visited since summer. It was gone! Replaced by baseball diamonds. Shoot. Let’s head to the park by our house. Kayli says “Where’s my puppy?” Oh, great. I immediately remember that she had brought her stuffed black puppy with her into the store we were at. The last thing we did was put a quarter in the candy machine to get some tiny doggy-bone shaped candy. So, back to the store we went and luckily, there was puppy, sitting right next to the candy machines. Now, on to the park. As we pull into the parking lot in front of the play equipment, Kayli notices that there is not a soul playing here. She says “Mom, no kids to play with.” “I can’t play here all by myself.” I offer to play but she wants “friends”. So, I suggest that since it’s now getting dark, and we haven’t eaten, we could go to McDonalds and she could play with the kids in the playland. Oh yeah, she likes that idea. Off we go. McDonalds is WILD! A huge group of boys are running and screaming and generally being “boys”. Kayli heads into the climber and minutes later she’s back looking “madder than a hornet”! “That boy told me I’m too little to play. That’s not nice mom and I won’t play with him.” Following a bit of encouragement, Kayli is back in the climber. She usually doesn’t like to go all the way up to the slides by herself, but something compelled her to head in that direction. I haven’t seen her for a bit and I’m trying to listen for her over the deafening noise of the yelling boys. Then, faintly but getting louder, I hear her crying. I stick my head in the bottom of the tubeslide and yell for her to come down, which she does after a bit of urging, now sobbing. In between gasps she tells me she doesn’t like the slide. All I can surmise is she got herself to the top of this tubeslide, thought “What the heck am I doing? I don’t want to go down that scary tube all by myself!” and panicked. So, once she “regrouped” from that ordeal, we bought some ice cream sundaes from the dollar menu. She told me “I’m feeling much better now mom”, and off she went to play. Now, most of the original group of kids have left, and some new ones are arriving, and it’s time for us to go home now, so I send Kayli to get her shoes on. Guess what? There’s only 1 pink shoe. Where is the other one? Kayli looks like she’s been mortally wounded when I suggest that someone may have taken it home by accident. She begins to cry. A family sitting nearby, feels bad for my weeping child, and sends their kids on a “scavenger hunt” through the playland, to look for Kayli’s shoe. Pretty soon all the kids in the playland from about 2-6yrs., are reporting back to me all the places they’ve looked and come up empty handed. A little guy, no more than 3, reports “I yooked for that yittle girl shoe but can’t find it.” Kayli was now only intermittently crying in my arms (every time someone reported that the shoe was still missing) It was clear that we should call it a loss and move on, so I thanked the kids and assured them that Kayli could get some more shoes. Nobody seemed convinced, as these little eyes skeptically stared up at me holding Kayli, who was still clinging to her one shoe. Yes, I tell them, Really, I saw some neat colorful shoes like this (fake crocs) at Wal*Mart the other day. We will go there tomorrow. Whew, I hope our luck turns around by tomorrow!