Stroller drama and coat sucking

Yesterday I thought I would try something new. You see, on sunny days, Kylie likes to walk to our nearby park and play on the swings. The park is about a half a mile from our house so I'm very proud that Kylie can walk that distance. But she really doesn't want to walk home after playing and I really don't want to carry her. So we usually call Momma K to come get us. It only takes about five minutes round trip. But I don't like pulling Karen away from her work like that.

So I decided to try something new. I thought Kylie and I would walk to the park and I would carry the little umbrella stroller to push her back. I got the stroller all ready. I even put a little bungee cord around it so that I could push it collapsed. I packed my little bag with ipod and headphones, camera, cell phone and raisins and off to the park we go.

Except.

That Kylie SAT DOWN in the driveway and refused to walk. She wanted to ride in the stroller. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Do you want to go to the park?
Kylie: Sobs "yes"
Me: Then let's go.
Kylie: Sobbing harder "Stroller"
Me: Honey, we are going to walk just like we always do. I'll push you back in the stroller. So come on. Let's walk to the park.
Kylie: STROLLER!
Me: Sigh. And load her in the stroller.

The whole time I'm walking her in the stroller I'm thinking, "Well heck! I ran today! I don't need the exercise. Dang! this bag is heavy. Why do I carry all this stuff? Why are these umbrella strollers so dang short? Why didn't we just drive? This is crazy."

Anyway, we got to the park. Kylie decided to suck on her coat for a while. I don't know if her teeth hurt or if she was soothing herself from the stroller drama. But I have a bunch of pictures of her sucking on her coat like this:

And this:

Some boys (a 2 yr old and a 3yr old) came to the park and finally Kylie stopped sucking on her coat long enough to go on a pine cone hunt with them. When she was good and tired, she wanted in the swing.

I don't know how you can ignore the person pushing you in the swing but my daughter manages it.

By the way, I called Karen to come pick us up. She heard about the story and promptly drove me to Starbucks. Like I've said, my wife is brilliant.