Busy Sidewalks

For the past few months I've been jogging with the boys in the mornings. I usually leave the house between 8 and 8:30 am (depending on when Barrett wakes up). Some mornings the boys eat their breakfast in the stroller and other days I feed them before we leave. This morning both boys were up early, so we were hittin' the pavement by 8 am.

Brody wanted to run by the policeman's house (there are several cops in our neighborhood and there's usually one cop car home during the day), so we headed that direction first. Then we headed up to the school where for the past few weeks I've been doing fartleks (although I've been pronouncing them "far-licks" and when I googled it to check the spelling realized it's actually "fartleks"...Swedish for speed play) which for me has consisted of running sprints on Brody's timetable (whenever he says go). He doesn't like to give me much rest...so it wears me out! Then we run around the school and back towards our neighborhood. Usually the neighboring HOA has the sprinklers running on the grass along the sidewalk and we're able to cool off as we finish the run.

Today as we rounded the corner and looked up the hill that is one street over from the school, we saw that cars were parked down the street for over a block. Suddenly I was hit with a stark realization. "It's the first day of school!" I thought we could still run up to the school and just run along the front on the sidewalk. As I topped the hill and looked towards the school I realized that I had no clue how many people would be dropping off kids! The sidewalks were packed curb to curb with couples walking their kids to the elementary school and excited little ones with their new backpacks. Amid the chaos I tried to turn my double jogging stroller around and make a quick escape back to the quite neighborhood. We passed some of our neighbors (my cousin, Jon, invited us to a party at our neighbors house this past Friday...our neighbor is one of Jon's high school friends), said "Hi", and then escaped the crowd.

When I do fartleks at the school, I park the stroller on the sidewalk and they watch (and Brody yells "On your mark, get set, go!"). I didn't want to park them in the street...but I'd already told Brody we were going to do them (and he wouldn't let me get away with just jogging! lol) So I decided to sprint while pushing the double jogger. The boys thought it was fun to go so fast! It was a HARD workout for me (especially since the stroller doesn't have a brake!) and I was really sucking air by the time we were done.

As we were jogging back home I told the boys, "I gonna die!" Brody looked at me and then laughed and said, "No you're not!" I realized that I shouldn't use that term flippantly. The other day I got on to Brody for running across the street without looking both ways. I told him that if a car had hit him he would've died! If I want that to remain a serious consequence in his mind...I shouldn't joke about it at the end of a run. So I told him, "You're right. I'm not gonna die...but I might throw up!" Again he laughed. We made it safely back to the house and the boys busied themselves playing Connect Four (by their own rules) while I cleaned up and got ready for work.