On Playgrounds

Not too much to say today.  My germy little girl with her germy little hands and germy little nose hit the playground on Saturday afternoon.  The big playground where we have had her birthday parties for the last few years and will do again this year.  I don't actually feel bad about having Miss Germy-pants Midas contaminating everything she touched, transposing ordinary playground equipment into cold-covered free-for-alls.  Maybe I should, but hell, I know what's been there before.  Hell, I figure that's where she got this nastiness in the first place, and if she's happy and willing enough to play, then who am I to say no?  Just contributing to the strenthening of hundreds of little immune systems to come...  Besides, it was kind of late in the day and the rain was on its way.  Not like I think rain would knock germs off their grimy perches or anything...  (...uh, am I doing a good enough job of justifying my actions?) 

It was just a cold.  And I was starting to feel pretty freaking wretched (that one sits quite high atop my Words-I-Love list...) to boot.  How guilty I felt telling my poor baby that I couldn't play with her on the teeter totter or at the "McDonald's window."  She looked pretty put-out, but seriously, I was doing my best just not to fall down. 

But she had a ball. 

I can probably point to a dozen blog posts I've written over the years, complaining about how huge the differences were between Samantha and the children playing around her.  Lamenting the fact that kids 2 years younger were so far above and beyond her own skill set, comparing her to other, typical children.  I know I'm not supposed to compare. 

And maybe, just maybe I've reached a real, live turning point.  A day when I totally didn't notice.  And didn't care.  Or maybe Samantha's own maturity level and physical strengths have reached a point where she was so much more able to do much of what the other children were doing. 

As I watched her on the teeter totter with another little girl, I marveled at how far she has come in the last 2 years, breathed a sigh of relief and joy at seeing her feet touch the ground effortlessly, pushing up at each turn, knowing exactly what to do, the other child enjoying the game as much as she was. 

I watched her climb every single type of climber there was, never once asking for help, barely wavering on the more challenging ones, requiring me to spot her only once.  And each time, she made it to the top, reached her final destination, proud that she accomplished the goal.  And again, I recalled a time, not so long ago, when all of that would have been an impossibility.

And while I had to assert my Mama-Bear authority to the big kids who nearly knocked her off one of her perches as she climbed (I managed to throw in the word please at the end, just in case any of their parents were in ear-shot...), I would have done that for any smaller child in the same predicament.

She looked like any other kid. 


(Update:  I wrote the previous post on Saturday afternoon, not long after returning from the playground.  By Saturday night I was pretty sure all three of us had strep, confirmed at Urgent Care on Sunday morning.  Oops.)