"You can't have two fun parents..." ~ Claire Dunphy, "Modern Family"

I'm not a helicopter parent.  I don't spend every second with my child hovering over him, making sure he does absolutely nothing out of line.  Don't get me wrong; I don't let him stand on the furniture, or stick his fingers in the electrical outlets, or play with chemicals under the sink or anything like that.  But when he runs over like he's going to climb up the stairs, I don't immediately chase him.  I normally ignore him for a second, and he comes back on his own, crisis (and tantrum) averted.

And, so far, being a laidback mom has worked pretty well.  My kid's healthy, smart, and has had only a couple ER visits.  One was for a bad ear infection, and the other was when he took a bite out of a glass holiday ornament (but seriously, that really wasn't my fault).  But all in all, my little man has been doing pretty well.

My husband's like me, and most of our extended family takes it pretty chill as well.  The exception is my dad, who cuts the kids' food up so tiny he might as well run it through a blender, and thinks every sneeze warrants a call to the doctor.  We all give him a hard time for being paranoid, and he's convinced we're all dangerously unsafe.

So of course it would be at his poppa's house that my son got his first major booboo.

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Caryites aren't born...they're self-replicated.

Since it's ridiculously beautiful for February, and since I've escaped retail hell and now have my weekends free, hubby and I took baby boy to Marla Dorrel Park in Cary today to meet Nana and eat a picnic lunch and play.  It's over 70 degrees today and sunny, and I had no intention of wasting it inside.

Every time I've been to this particular park/playground in the past, it's been awesome.  It's massive, with separate playgrounds for kids of different ages, sandlots, three different types of swings (even a tire swing), and, as evidenced by the picture in the upper-left corner, a sweet climb-on dragon built into the side of a hill.  (I wish I had a better picture.  In real life the dragon is huge, and looks like Nessie surfacing from the ground like it was water.)

Unfortunately, the big distinction between my prior visits to Marla Dorrel and my visit today, was that, in the past, I've only ever come on weekdays.  Today was my first time visiting on the weekend.

And, oh, what a difference a day makes.

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